Rags of Time
by Iolanthe 8
Summary: The Witch's fire demon has Howl's heart in its clutches, and our hero is as good as dead. I certainly hope the next update doesn't take another year.
1. Part One

Acknowledgment: _Howl's Moving Castle,_ the story and its characters, belongs to Diana Wynne Jones.  
Welsh Pronunciation Note: "Mam" Mom; "Tad" Dad.  
Warning: HMC book ending spoilers.

—o—o—o—

_Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,_  
_Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time._

—_John Donne, "The Sun Rising"_

—o—

He'd always heard it felt like an elephant standing on your chest.

But there was no elephant. The thing that filled the castle room with anguish and terror was unnatural and far more monstrous: a demonic spirit wearing a humanoid body. And she—it—was squeezing his heart like a dishcloth, wringing the blood from it, the life.

He heard neither his own scream, nor Calcifer's. Even before he hit the floor he knew it was over. He'd lost.

And soon he would be gone—gone beyond remorse or grief for those he left behind: Sophie and Michael, Calcifer, Mari, Megan, Lettie, Mrs. Fairfax, Ben Sullivan, Prince Justin, the King and all the good people of Ingary; even Gareth and Neil.

_You always knew you were going to let them down. Well, you did._

The mist was rising. The light was fading.

Hell's teeth! No! No, he was _not _going to go gentle into that good night. Not this time. No more slithering out. He was going to fight it, heart and soul—

_Not bloody likely. _Not with the enemy sinking claws like knives into his heart. And who knew what was left of his wretched soul, if he'd ever had one to begin with? But he had to keep fighting. He had to. If he didn't, it really _would_ be all over.

The light shrank to a pin-prick. The next instant would be extinction.

When the next instant failed to occur, he realized that time had stopped, just there. His final moment was before him, stretched into infinity. The light shone endlessly past him, no longer a point but a dazzling beam. He was moving along it, yet perfectly still. For thirty seconds—or thirty million years; who knew?—nothing happened.

His soul—by all the gods, he had a soul!—soon got bored and was fidgeting, shuffling its feet, looking for something to do with its hands. Behold, ye suns and stars of space: Howell Jenkins, hyperkinetic even at the brink of eternity.

"_Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it—"_

Poetry, always bits of poetry popping into his head at the crisis points of his life—or, in this case, bits of poetical prose:

"—_but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains."_

That Raleigh fellow again? No, Howell had got it wrong too many times. It had to be Donne.

"_I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars."_

He saw that he could move closer, dip a toe in, discover where in memory that sliding current took him.

—o—

i.

Mam was dead. She had died about a month since, in ghastly pain from the cancer. For weeks before that she hadn't even known Howell, or Meg, or Tad. After they lost Mam, they lost each other. Meg grew silent and bitter. Tad grew loud and violent. In drunken rage he struck out at God, the church, the National Health, the Queen—and at Mam, for leaving him.

Worst of all, he struck out at his children. He never laid a hand on Megan, though; Howell always put himself between her and Tad when Tad was going on like that. So Howell bore the brunt of their father's madness: the kicked-in doors, the shattered china, the shouts, the blows.

He was eleven years old.

Things were better at school. During that same term Howell had discovered rugby, and rugby had discovered him. He was thin and light, but he played with a toughness born of desperation. And with his broken nose and knocked-out teeth, he fit right in.

When the winter holidays came, the darkness and sadness returned. Without Mam there was no Christmas—no tree, no pudding, no presents. Thankfully, Tad was unconscious much of the time. That left Meggie, but she hardly spoke. She was fifteen, tall and slender like Howell, but careworn, growing hunch-shouldered like an old woman. She spent Christmas night in her room with the door shut. Howell was utterly alone.

In the cold and wet he walked sadly to the churchyard, his darkish-brown hair flattened to his neck and shoulders by the drizzle. He gathered some greens and a sprig of mistletoe, and tied them with a bit of soggy red ribbon he'd fished from a dustbin. It wasn't much to give Mam for her first Christmas in heaven, but it was the best he could do.

She was there, silent beneath her white stone:

In Loving Memory  
Anna Caridwen Elizabeth Powell Jenkins  
Beloved Daughter, Wife, and Mother  
Departed This Life 11 November 19–

He placed the pitiful wreath against the stone and sank to his knees in the cold wet turf. He remained there for a long time. His heart ached so horribly he wished he could wrench it from his chest and be done with it. How could the world hold so much loneliness and pain without bursting right open?

He got up at last to go, drenched and half frozen. _"'N ddedwydd Nadolig," _he said. "Happy Christmas, Mam. I love you."

He turned toward home, only to find that the churchyard and the dim Welsh evening had vanished. He stood at the edge of a jolly Christmas-card village, with pine trees and falling snow and people ice-skating on a pond, laughing and shouting. Their coats and hats were spots of colour amidst the white softness.

Howell wanted badly to join them, to be part of something cheerful on this cheerless night. "But this old thing is all wrong," he said, looking down at his sodden black wool jacket. "You ought to be red, trimmed in fur," he told it. "Cut a bit old-fashioned, like those folks. And instead of these ugly boots I should be wearing silver skates—"

And suddenly, he was. It was like magic. He didn't pause to wonder at this, or at the warmth and joy that surged through him, because he was already gliding out onto the ice.

The other skaters smiled and called out greetings. "Welcome to Market Chipping!" they shouted. There was a great bonfire on the bank, and he was offered cakes and sweets and warm spiced cider. Then he was swept up into a game of some sort, rather like snap-the-whip. He quickly caught on.

But even in that enchanted place it grew late, and one by one the skaters went home to the lamplit cottages that lined the pond and the streets beyond. Reluctantly Howell turned back the way he had come, toward the unhoused, unlit shore.

The moment he touched the bank his skates and fur-trimmed finery vanished, and he stood at Mam's grave once again. A bitter midnight wind was blowing.

—o—

ii.

For years afterward, hard though he tried by wishing or imagining, Howell could not summon that magical place. He would have written it off as a grief-induced hallucination and forgot it, had it not been for the hours he spent reading _Y Gododdin, Pwyll and Pryderi,_ _The Island of the Mighty,_ and other stories of magic and myth in Welsh tradition. At the same time, he was studying in school the more far-out aspects of chemistry and physics.

There was some theoretical basis for this spontaneous alteration of his clothing at the edge of the enchanted pond. Such transformations required quantities of energy pretty well impossible to muster—in this world, at least. But if you could travel back down the fractured quantum trajectories of the universe through time, tweaking the laws of nature as you went, alternate dimensions became not only possible, but probable: worlds alongside our own, in which matter could more easily be transmuted. It was exactly what the old alchemists had attempted.

But for Howell the experience had had a quality not completely reducible to Matter. Like the alchemists, he had felt it to be mystical, almost spiritual. At dark moments, and there were still plenty of those, he remembered the pond, the village, and the silver ice-skates, and longed with all his heart to find that place again.

—o—

iii.

When Howell was thirteen, Megan came home one day to find their father on the floor, dead.

Tad's liver had long since given it up, and now his heart had quit too.

It was horrible and shocking how all the grief of losing Mam came soaring back. Badly though Tad had hurt them, he was their last connection with her. Howell remembered how it had been when he and Meggie were little, when Mam was well and Tad was jolly and loving. It terrified him to think that they were orphans now. But there was no knowing how Megan felt about it; she had become a stranger. The events of the past two years had driven brother and sister apart.

They soon learned, to their surprise, that a little money had been left to each of them. As the elder, Megan, now seventeen, was executor. Within a month of Tad's passing she was married to one Gareth Parry, a schoolmate. Howell didn't much like him; he was beetle-browed, surly, and not intelligent. In other words, he was completely unworthy of Megan.

"All right then, Howell," Megan said, one morning not long after the wedding. "The house is going. Gareth says we should sell it."

"And just who's Gareth to decide what's done with our house?"

"He's my _husband, _Howell. He says the place is old and charming enough to fetch a good price from those twee city sorts who are always through here, cooing over the dear little cottages."

"What about the roof?"

"Their problem. Gareth says they're buying quaintness, not working plumbing."

The place did sell, and to the exact sort of buyers Gareth had predicted. Then they learned that before he died Tad had taken out a ruinous mortgage. After the sale there was hardly anything left. Even added to Megan's inheritance, it was not going to go far.

Nevertheless, the three of them spent days touring builders' models in the hills outside Swansea. Megan at last found the sterile suburban villa of her dreams, though at a price that took their breath away—but she was _not _to be talked out of it.

Well, they _were _his family, the only family he had. It was going to take most of his own funds added to theirs to make the down payment, but he wanted his sister to be comfortable and happy—all the more so since Megan, silly girl, had forfeited her immediate prospects by getting married before she got all her education.

Howell, on the other hand, was doing brilliantly at school and was well along the university track. And he had his own dream, born of his rugby triumphs: one day he was going to play for Wales! So how could he refuse?

And so they moved in. In a moment of hope—and irony—Howell christened the new house 'Rivendell,' a name that was none the worse for having been done to death. He felt they all could use a place of peace and refuge—and respectability, which Megan desperately craved now that the degradation of Tad's alcoholism was behind her.

Neil's arrival six months after the wedding was not at all helpful in this regard.

—o—

iv.

Megan quickly discovered that she hated motherhood. She tried nursing only twice, and both times Neil clamped down so hard she screamed. Then _he_ started screaming, from hunger and frustration, because Megan (not surprisingly) had no milk.

She sank into a post-partum funk in front of the television downstairs. Gareth fled to the nearest pub. Because someone had to do it, Howell bought the necessary equipment at Sainsburys and took over the feedings.

At first he felt clumsy and idiotic, terrified he would drop Neil, or squeeze him too hard, or worse. But when with trembling hands Howell finally managed to get the bottle to his angry little mouth, Neil seized it ferociously. He nursed for twenty minutes, then abruptly fell asleep. Howell carried him upstairs and carefully laid him in his crib. Then he stood beside it recovering, shaking all over.

He didn't know what to do next. Megan had been asleep for hours, and Gareth was still out. Howell had always heard that new babies kept everybody up all night, so he thought he'd better stay awake. He had school in the morning, but never mind. He stayed by the crib, doing counting rhymes in his head to keep from dropping off.

At about two, Neil woke up for his middle-of-the-nighter. Gently Howell lifted him from the cradle and put him to his shoulder. It was getting a little easier.

"All right then, mate," he said. "Downstairs we go." He managed to get the bottle nicely warmed with one hand while he held Neil with the other. So far so good.

But suddenly Neil whimpered and gave an unhappy gurgle. In a spate of projectile vomiting his last evening's supper ended up all over the kitchen, all over Howell, and all over Neil himself, who was wailing bloody murder because now, of course, he was _really _hungry.

Dutifully Howell began again, pouring the now too-cool formula down the basin and preparing a new one.

"Let's go slower this time, shall we?" he said, thinking maybe that Neil's spell of sick had been set off by gulping air. Neil wasn't having any of that. He drained the bottle in two minutes flat. Then his little face got bright red until Howell remembered that babies needed bubbling after they dined.

"And I suppose you're going to want changing, too, and bathing," Howell said as he gently patted Neil's little back. "Then how about getting nice and drowsy again, so that Uncle Howell can catch a kip before school?"

No such luck. Neil fretted and fretted, almost till dawn. Howell had to be at school in two hours. He hadn't done his lessons yet. The kitchen was a disaster. He wondered why anyone bothered with babies when it was clear that looking after them was overwhelming, exhausting, and unending.

But just then Neil made a little sound of contentment and took a hank of Howell's hair in his tiny fist, and Howell forgave him everything.

Of course now, along with the thousand other things that needed doing, he had a wide-awake baby on his hands. He supposed he could try reciting it some poetry, or—God forbid!—singing it a lullaby. _"Si lwli, lwli," _he began tentatively, then couldn't remember any more. He tried another, one Mam used to sing:

"_Huna'n dawel, heno, huna, h__una'n fwyn, y tlws ei lun;  
__Pam yr wyt yn awr yn gwenu, g__wenu'n dirion yn dy hun?"_

Tuneless though it was, his singing worked like an enchantment.

—o—

v.

When next he found that other place, Howell was riding a wave not of grief but of exuberance.

Although he was not quite sixteen, he had been accepted to university, both for scholarship and for rugby. He was so happy he thought his heart would burst.

He turned to take a farewell look at his old prep school. "So long," he said. "And thanks for all the fish," he added, wishing he could hitch-hike his way through the galaxy. The next moment that wish almost came true. The iron gate clanged shut behind him and he stepped out—not into the Rhondda Road but into a jewel-coloured city with golden domes and towers. The air was heavy with flowers, and the fronds of exotic trees rose high into the dazzling clear blue sky.

People were hurrying about looking important. They were sumptuously dressed, in cloaks and robes and long flowing sleeves, like something from a Renaissance tableau. Howell looked down at his undone school tie, his rumpled shirt, his worn trousers and scuffed shoes. No good.

Well, if he had done it once, he could do it again. He took a moment to study the smorgasbord of finery going past. "I should have a deep blue velvet suit like that one," he said aloud, "with lace cuffs like this one, and cut-outs trimmed with silver thread like that fellow over there has on those sleeves of his, only more of them. And trousers to match, tucked into new shiny black boots."

And it was so. He studied his reflection in a nearby window. He looked good. He looked marvellous, in fact. But he ought to do something about his scruffy mud-coloured hair. He lengthened it and gave it an elegant medieval sort of cut. He darkened it almost to black, against which his eyes blazed intensely green.

His nose was still ugly, though—could he possibly alter living tissue? He passed a hand across his face and felt skin and cartilage stretching, reshaping themselves, settling with a snap. There, now it was even better than before Tad broke it. His teeth, too, though they had been repaired, could use a bit of straightening. And there he was—glam, good-looking: a regular rock star. For the first time in his life, he didn't feel ugly. He smiled at his reflection and it smiled back at him, his newly beautified teeth gleaming whitely. He was _gorgeous._

He decided to set out at once to explore this place—and to see whether any of the local girls would give him the time of day, now that he was such a dashing specimen.

Reluctantly turning from his glorious reflection, he found himself face to face with a tall old woman. Had she been there all along? She was proud and upright and dressed as royally as a queen. Howell thought she must surely be one, and not knowing what else to do, he bowed politely. "My lady," he said.

The lady inclined her head almost imperceptibly. "I am Mariah Pentstemmon," she said. "And you are—who?"

"Howell Arthur Morgan Jenkins, my lady."

"I like your gift, Howell Jenkins," she said, slowly looking him up and down. "You give beauty to things, not least of which is yourself."

"That's—thank you," he said uncertainly.

"You're very welcome," she replied. "I would like to talk to you, Mr. Jenkins. Will you join me for tea?"

_So the first girl I meet is eighty years old,_ he thought ruefully. _Just my luck. _But no, clearly this was about business. And with any luck the lady would explain where he was, how he got here, and what to do about it.

She placed a gold-lettered card in his hand.

Mrs. Mariah Pentstemmon,  
Instructor of Spellcasting.  
Number 11, Crystal Court,  
Highgate, Kingsbury.

_Spellcasting? _He looked up in amazement. The old woman was gone.

He found Crystal Court around a corner, not far away. It was well-named; the setting sun glittered in the facets of an endless line of tall mullioned windows. Howell had to pass through an iron gate and down a long wide street. Number 11 was on the left. There were splendid rose trees in brass pots on either side of the tall door, which opened before Howell could reach for the bell.

"Good evening, Mr. Jenkins," said the butler, who was all in black velvet.

The house was like a fairytale palace. Howell's boots echoed on the black-and-white marble floor. The ceilings were lofty, and everywhere he saw velvet and crystal and the glint of gilded things. He felt quite special, being invited to such a place. By the time the butler led him into a grand parlour and presented him to Mrs. Pentstemmon, he was grinning like a Cheshire cat.

"Thank you, Hunch," she said. Hunch bowed and silently departed. "Please sit, Howell."

A vast tea was set out before him. "You are my guest," said the lady, nodding at the feast.

"Thank you, Mrs. Pentstemmon." Howell hadn't realized he was famished. For the next twenty minutes he tried not to eat like a pig. His hostess ate nothing, sipping her tea in silence, studying him. He knew he was making bollocks of every rule of etiquette ever thought of, but he was only a working-class lad from Wales, after all. In any case, he did not sense disdain or disapproval from her—not of his table manners, at any rate. He knew she was sizing up his other shortcomings with deadly accuracy. But she said nothing until he had finished. It was the most splendid meal he'd ever had. "Thank you, Mrs. Pentstemmon," he said again, fervently.

"You are very welcome, Mr. Jenkins." The old woman set her teacup down and steepled her fingers together, gazing keenly at Howell. "Now then," she said.

He felt himself sitting up straight, good and proper.

"I am going to ask you some questions," she said. "But first I will answer any that _you_ might have. So. What would you ask me?"

"What is this place, Mrs. Pentstemmon?" Howell said eagerly. "I think I came here once before, a long time ago—"

"You did," said the lady. "Today, for the second time, you have entered the sovereign realm and kingdom of Ingary."

"Ingary," he repeated. "And _where,_ if you know what I mean, is that?"

"Ingary exists in a plane of reality many quantum levels from your own," she said. "Do you understand what I am saying?"

"Yes, madam, I do. But why did I come here? What brought me?"

"Your innate magical gift," she said.

"Innate—?" Howell said, baffled.

"Innate, yes. Inborn in you, either by inheritance or by chance. And it is a significant gift, one of the most powerful I have ever seen."

Howell was stunned into silence.

"However," she went on, rather severely, "like others who have come here from your world, your gift is latent only, undisciplined and wild. It must be trained, put into the service of good. Otherwise it will cause great harm to others—and to yourself."

Her eyes were no longer merely gazing at him; they were piercing right though all the rubbish he thought he believed, all the nonsense he thought he knew.

"Until today, I had all but retired from teaching," she said. "Now that I have met you, I will put off my retirement. So here is a question for _you_, Mr. Jenkins. Will you allow me to train you to use your great gift well and, I hope, wisely?"

He wasn't even thinking; the words just came tumbling out. "Yes, Mrs. Pentstemmon. Please teach me. _Please._"

—o—o—o—o—

Notes:

_It had to be Donne._ — Wrong again, Howl. It's Henry David Thoreau.

_In drunken rage—_When we see them together in HMC Chapter 11, Howell and Megan are to my mind behaving very much as do children of alcoholics.

_Y Gododdin, Pwyll and Pryderi_ — From _The Mabinogion,_ a medieval collection of Welsh tales based on legend and myth.

_The Island of the Mighty —_ A novel by Evangeline Walton, based on parts of _The Mabinogion._

"_Si lwli, lwli." — _"Lullaby, lullaby."

"_Huna'n dawel, heno, huna," etc. _— The second verse of the Welsh Lullaby "Suo Gân." A translation: "Here tonight I tightly hold you/And enfold you while you sleep./Why, I wonder, are you smiling/Smiling in your slumber deep?"


	2. Part Two

Warnings: Very nerdy end-notes. Some mild bad language.

—o—o—o—o—

vi.

Mrs. Pentstemmon wished to begin his training at once. This meant that the following morning Howell had to beg off helping Gareth paint the kitchen. He knew that Megan's sudden need for cupboard doors of Creme Blush instead of Cafe-au-Lait would be of no interest to Mrs. Pentstemmon—not when there was wild magic like his on the loose, and in not one world but two.

They did no spellcasting at that first lesson, however. For five hours Mrs. Pentstemmon talked, and in growing awe and dread, he listened.

"First and foremost, Howell Jenkins, know this. The greatest natural power in this world or any other is that of the human mind. Even in your own world it has made profound transformations, though slowly, over the course of centuries.

"But here in Ingary matter can be altered in an instant, by those with the ability. As you have seen for yourself, a thought or a wish is enough to cast a mild short-range spell. The greater spells are cast by the spoken word. Be very careful when you speak. You have the power to alter the fate of another—or yourself—by your word alone."

She planned on wasting no time with him on potions, charms, and minor spells. He was capable of mastering that lore on his own, and she expected him to do so. Howell must instead be taught to discipline and direct his power, at the same time detaching it from his impulses and emotions. Mrs. Pentstemmon did not quite put it this way, but Howell realized that he was to become, in effect, a martial artist of the highest degree. To become capable of killing with a word meant developing such mindfulness that in the end you would step over even a tiny ant, rather than crush it unthinkingly with your foot.

_But I am such a squirming mess inside,_ the thought helplessly.

"Never forget," she said. "Magic must be respected. It must be used with the utmost thought and care. If ever I suspect that you are dealing frivolously with your gift, I will end your lessons without further notice and seal all portals to this world against you."

_And when have I ever been serious about anything? _he thought, even more helplessly. He knew he was both brilliant and lazy; Megan had told him so a thousand times. For much of his life he'd managed to get by on that brilliance, but now the account was coming due.

"Howell, are you listening to me? Do you understand what I just said?"

"Yes, Mrs. Pentstemmon." His voice was barely a squeak.

"Good. But we go further. Magic, like any other force of nature, is morally ambiguous. It can be used for good or ill, help or harm. I have chosen you as my pupil because I respect your gift. In return I expect you to respect my values. If ever you use my teaching to harm another unjustly, may the Power that rules all worlds strike you dead. Do you understand me, Howell?"

"Yes, Mrs. Pentstemmon," he repeated, inwardly shriveling. He had no idea how he was ever going to live up to her faith in him.

—o—

vii.

But he gritted his teeth and did his best. Mrs. P. was nothing like Mam, who had loved him unconditionally. In fact she was the strictest, severest teacher he had ever had. Yet in her way she loved him too; he came to know this as time went on, and it gave him confidence and strength.

But try as she would to instill in him a sense of his place both in littleness and in greatness, there were parts of him her love could not reach. The wounded boy who had lost his mother, only to have his father turn violent and his sister turn cold; the painful shyness that he concealed with a swagger; the hormonal surges of adolescence—Mrs. Pentstemmon knew nothing of these. She was of such ancient and noble Ingarian lineage that social awkwardness was out of the question. And she seemed completely without interest in love or romance. If there had ever been a Mr. Pentstemmon, he must have died long since.

Howell, on the other hand, thought constantly of nothing but magic, rugby, and sex. He got plenty of the first two. He desperately wanted some of the third. But Mrs. Pentstemmon's example had elevated all females to worthiness of the highest respect—even the easy-going sort who, at the first sight of Howell's laser-beam smile, looked more than ready for a tumble.

This got to be bloody inconvenient back at home. It set him apart from the more vicious, low-life elements of the rugby crowd, who were all too eager to get something on the tall scrawny wing who got the ball right past them while kicking their arses sideways to hell. But even more scholarly sorts often mistook Howell's intensity for effeminacy. This, combined with his clothes sense and his circumspection toward girls, made him a ready target for accusations and innuendoes and all sorts. That they were untrue was beside the point; the contempt in his tormentors' voices as they flung those names at him was an object lesson in the power of words to cast a malignant spell.

Idiots! They had no idea what they were dealing with. As Mrs. Pentstemmon often reminded him, "The power to alter matter is the power to deal death." Even in his home world, where magic had been subsumed in the slow processes of technology, Howell possessed that power.

But thank the gods he had enough sense to treat it with proper humility. Thank the gods that because of it he learned compassion and pity. Life surged in everything. It was fragile, too easily destroyed. Howell could kill on the merest whim, if he chose. He could not, would not ever so choose. The very thought sickened him.

Yet how sweet it was, in his loneliest hours, to imagine levitating those bastards right up off the ground and slamming them into the nearest wall!

—o—

viii.

For the next five years he divided his time between Wales and Ingary, rugby and studies. He carried on into post-graduate studies in Wales, but it was in Ingary that he was putting down roots. The career opportunities were excellent thanks to Mrs. Pentstemmon, who was opening doors for him right and left. She even presented him at Court.

Her last protégé but one, Suliman, was now Royal Wizard to the King of Ingary. He was a tall sturdy fellow with a ruddy, craggy face and gingery-brown hair. When the lady introduced them, Suliman grasped Howell's hand warmly and said, _"Sut mae,_ Jenkins?"

"_Ach Brython hefyd?"_ Howell said, astonished.

"_Ie,"_ Suliman said. "I am. Born near Caerleon."

Egad! The Royal Wizard might be related to Merlin himself. "What about you, Jenkins?"

"Caersiddi," Howell said. "Tiny place in the valleys. No family there any more, though. They've relocated to outside Swansea."

"I know of Caersiddi," Suliman said. "'The Revolving Castle.' Long magical history there too, I believe."

Nice fellow, Suliman. "However did you get here?" Howell asked, as the Royal Wizard escorted them into his study. It was high up in the palace, not far from the King's own chambers, and quite sumptuously appointed. Homelike, too, with a huge stone fireplace and an excellent library. Howell's eye at once caught three classics: White's _Once and Future King,_ Graves's _White Goddess,_ and Lady Guest's great translation of _The Mabinogion_.

Suliman conjured a pale yellow cordial for each of them, then raised his glass in a toast. It tasted for all the world like honey mead.

"I was born Benjamin Sullivan," he said by way of answering Howell's question. "My parents always said we were a magical family, but I never saw anything to show it until I was eight or so. We were at a big lawn party in the country. I went off exploring, got separated from Mum and Dad. Next thing I knew I was in Ingary, not far from the Waste."

"A grim place in which to find yourself," Mrs. Pentstemmon commented.

"Yes, quite grim. And awfully scary for a kid, opening your eyes and finding yourself in another universe. But not ten minutes had gone by before a very jolly hedge-witch named Mrs. Dawes found me. She dried my tears and fed me a huge piece of blueberry pie with clotted cream, then saw me safely to my portal."

Such luck! Howell allowed himself a moment of frank envy. _His family goes to garden parties at the local manse, while mine's one generation out of the colliery. _How very useful, not to mention pleasant, it would have been to grow up in a magical home. Even a happy one would have been something.

"After that I kept popping up at Mrs. Dawes's place near Hilltown," Sullivan said. "That's when she contacted Mrs. Pentstemmon. Mum and Dad knew of her, and were delighted. What about you, Jenkins?"

_Do you really want to hear about my mother dying and my father beating the shite out of me?_ Howell thought bitterly. "I came here the first time on a very bad day in my life," Howell said. "I came back on a very good day. That's all, really."

Sullivan exchanged glances with Mrs. Pentstemmon. "Just like that?" he said. "Good lord. You'll be a thousand times the wizard I am, once you reach your full powers."

"Oh," Howell said, somewhat mollified. "Thanks. Very kind of you. But I don't quite follow."

"What I'm saying is that most of us have a lifelong struggle to build our power and maintain it. Your struggle, my friend, will be to rein in, control, and focus that tremendous gift you've got. You're a force of nature, Jenkins. You can bend space-time with your emotions alone. And damn, that's—well, it's cool!"

The Royal Wizard sounded so cheerful about a burden he didn't have to carry—a burden that Howell was finding heavier by the day.

—o—

ix.

Mrs. Pentstemmon had a career in mind for him that was very different from Ben Sullivan's. This was fine with Howell. He might envy Sullivan his posh childhood and jolly parents, but he did not in the least envy the Royal Wizard his exalted post. Like all courts, this one played an even rougher game than rugby. And anyway, there was the magical Inglish countryside and its towns and villages, farmsteads and hamlets, to explore—and, if he got lucky, some lovely, demure Inglish girls to meet.

One day, not long after he turned twenty-one, he learned that Mrs. Pentstemmon had secured a position for him. It was in the north of Ingary, far from the capital and the court. "This is the place I came from," she said. "Its people are very dear to me. Their lives are harsh and their work is difficult and dangerous. With your gift for finding and expressing beauty, you can be of great service to them."

And so Howell settled in the coastal hamlet of Porthaven, many hundreds of miles from Kingsbury. The joy with which the villagers greeted his arrival touched him deeply. The elderly mage upon whom they had depended for forty-five years had died the previous winter. But the perils of making a living from the sea had not ceased, and the local fishermen had gone far too long without charms for sound boats and good catches.

What was more touching yet was that, although the villagers took Howell's courtly finery in stride, they knew him at once as one of their own. Porthaven was a impoverished town with shabby houses clinging desperately to the edge of the sea. It was like many places in Wales—which meant it was like home.

He set up shop in the high street as Sorcerer Jenkin. He kept himself in clothes that were of good cut, if not so fancy as the Kingsbury couture, because it was good for custom if you looked successful.

But in point of fact, he almost starved. He lived most days on turnips. Not that it mattered all that much; Howell ate to live, not the other way round, though he _did_ grow weary of the monotony. But the people of Porthaven had hardly any more money than he did, and their lives were far more precarious. Rather than turn them away empty-handed, he charged them only a pittance—or nothing at all.

—o—

x.

In the meantime, there was Wales. Gareth was between jobs. Megan was pregnant again—she did not want to be—and although she was well into her fifth month, she still was running off to be sick every hour on the hour. Neil, not quite nine years old, had developed "behavioural difficulties." The authorities at his school said he was attention-deficit-disordered. Howell was convinced that the deficit of attention lay not in Neil but in his parents.

But there wasn't much he could do for his nephew. Neil had grown to be like Gareth—stocky, beetle-browed, and hostile. He made it plain that he was not going to spend any more time with his "loser" of an uncle, and that was flat.

—o—

xi.

Howell visited Mrs. Pentstemmon in early May, at the end of his first winter in Porthaven. Again she looked deeply into his eyes—this was as disturbing and discomfiting as it had always been—then gave him one of her rare smiles.

"I hear good reports of your work," she said, releasing his gaze. "Most young persons could not tolerate such a dull, remote post. You have taken on poverty and loneliness to serve those people. They know it and are grateful. I am pleased with you, Howell."

After the verbal beatings he took from his family, her words were a gift. She sent him back to Porthaven with a generous stipend, provided by the King, for relief for the hardship of his life there. Howell kept a small bit for himself as insurance against having to live on turnips ever again. The rest he divided between a young widow with five children, an old man who'd lost a leg to some sea-monster, and the harbour-master, for upkeep of the docks.

—o—

xii.

All his life he had used frantic activity to keep loneliness at bay. When that no longer worked he had engrossed himself in reading and study. He was lonelier than ever now, and nothing worked.

—o—

xiii.

Spring gave on to summer. Howell had come to appreciate, if not love, the austere beauty of the shingles and dunes that surrounded Porthaven, and the thrawn vegetation that clung to the ever-shifting shoreline. He ruined his boots exploring the marshes just inland of the village, where the mouth of the Folding, the great river that drained much of northern Ingary, dissolved into the coastal lowlands. It was a place of reeds and pools, a thousand kinds of birds, and vast silences.

He found an odd sort of comfort in the emptiness, which dwarfed into insignificance his worries and concerns about his family, his neighbours in the village, and himself.

With August came the Perseid meteor shower, here in Ingary called the late-summer star-fall. The name was not the only difference. In Wales, the "stars" fell in white streaks, and although it was exciting to see so many of them all at once, there really wasn't much else to it.

But in Ingary poetry overrode science, and falling stars were truly stars. They crashed into the marshes in great flashes of sound and light, and then they died. They truly died. No one had warned Howell of this. Each was a self, an essence that dissolved into nothingness even as its iridescent aura went dark. It was the saddest, most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

He had to know more. He had to get closer.

He ran home and tore through the broom closet, finally uncovering the battered old seven-leaguers he'd picked up at a second-hand shop in Kinsgbury. That night he went deeper into the marshes than he—or probably anyone—had ever gone, while all around him the stars fell to their glorious, heartbreaking deaths. Even in magic boots it was like chasing a rainbow. A few times he got close enough to see their odd, pointed faces filled with sorrow, terror, or resignation, and their lovely dark eyes just before they winked out forever. But there were one or two whose gaze was cold and brutal: little Saurons in search of another incarnation.

But good or ill, Howell sensed they all were dangerous. They were spirits after all, "demons" as the Ingarians called such things, and no doubt were well acquainted with celestial realms of exaltation or damnation far beyond human understanding. He began remembering all the stories he had read about encounters between mortals and elementals. They never worked out well for anybody but the Devil.

Best, then, to leave the dying stars to their fate.

Then he saw it, over there, on a trajectory that would send it splashing into a pool maybe thirty yards away.

And it saw him. That made all the difference. Howell didn't think, he just ran. He got beneath it seconds before it hit the water. The radiant beautiful thing hovered doubtfully, then settled just above his upturned hands. Amazingly, it did not burn.

It was flickering crazily. Its eyes were wild and wide. Howell was moved to a pity beyond anything he'd ever known, and _not_ by any desire for power or immortality. Who would even think of such things at a moment like this? The creature was _terrified._

"Little star," Howell said, "I won't let you fall."

"What are you?" It spoke in a soft chuffing whisper, like ashes settling after the fire has burned low.

"A human being."

"I need more information," said the star. It studied Howell uncertainly, poised to fling itself into the nearest pool should he make a sudden move.

"Well," Howell said lamely, "what do you know about terrestrial life forms?"

"I know that the force that drives them is biochemical, not nuclear."

"That's correct," Howell said. "In some way or other, we all have to eat, sleep, mate, have babies, and die."

"I find that very strange..." said the star. Its huge dark eyes were slowly, drowsily, drifting shut.

"Wait, wait!" Howell felt devastated to think it might die after all. He wanted to talk to it, learn from it...

"Can't stop it now," said the star. "Too late. Unless..."

"Unless what? Is there something I can do?"

"Yes, but hurry." it said. It was wide awake again, its eyes filled with hope and with something Howell could not quite define; a wariness, maybe, as though they were sizing him up. "I'll need something biochemical to keep me alive. And _not _marsh scum, " it added. "Some part of you, human. Some vital part."

_Now we come to it, _Howell thought. He made a hasty anatomic survey. He was not troubled by migraine, asthma, kidney stones, indigestion, bad knees; no point in giving away any of _those_ parts. There was one organ only that had tormented him most of his life, that ached so badly he'd often wished it right out his chest—

"Take my heart," he said.

"It's in good working order, of course," the creature affirmed.

"It's been broken several thousand times, but it works," Howell said.

"I think you are speaking symbolically?" said the star.

"I am," Howell said. "And what will you give me in return?"

Its eyes grew hooded and ambiguous. "I very much doubt that a star has anything useful to offer a human being."

"I see," Howell said. "Then allow me to make a few suggestions. Light and warmth in my hearth, for one; the winter in these parts is dreadfully raw. Hot water, for another. It's a luxury I don't enjoy in this world without a lot of hard work. And of course the occasional magical assist, your powers added to mine."

"Oh, there will be a link between us, you can be sure of that," said the star. "But first I get the heart."

"And you'll have to stick close," Howell added. "No floating off. I can't have any disembodied parts of myself out gamboling in the wind and rain. They'd catch their death."

"Well, human, simple logic should tell you that wind and rain would be the death of me as well, and then we'd both be worse off than before. So, then. Done?"

Howell hesitated.

"I know what you're thinking," said the star. It was guttering ominously. "But I don't want your soul, I want your heart. Quickly."

"Done," said Howell. He felt a sharp wrench, then suddenly there was a void in his chest, an abyss, cold and burning. Nothing visible had passed between them, yet there it was—a dark rounded thing in the depths of the star's fire, rapidly pulsating: his heart.

"It's heavy," said the star. "I don't know if—" It flared suddenly into blue-green flames, eyes like golden spangles. Then just as suddenly it shrank to a smouldering ember. "How ever did you stand having such a horrible weight inside you, human? I couldn't go floating off if I wanted to. Unless, of course, I decided to jettison this thing—"

"Not on your life, star."

"You'd better take me home and feed me fuel, then. And by the way, I do have a name."

"Yes, I know. I can hear it in my mind. Doubt I could pronounce it, though." Howell, sheltering the creature in the crook of his arm, was carefully picking his way through the marsh. It promised to be a long sticky trek, but seven-leaguers made too much wind and Howell didn't want take the chance.

The star brightened helpfully, illuminating the surrounding tussocks and pools.

"Thanks," Howell said.

"A pleasure. Now then, back to names. Perhaps if I were to translate? As you might expect, we stars prefer grand, high-sounding names. Each of us thinks of ourselves as the bearer of a noble quality such as glory, exaltation, strength, courage, heat, light—"

"'_Bearer of light?'" _Howell said uneasily. "Surely you're not Lucifer!"

"_Him?_ I should think not. No, no. He's doing penal servitude right now. I never even met him."

Howell was astonished at how relieved he was.

"My name _is_ similar, now you mention it," admitted the star, "But there the resemblance ends. I am the bearer of warmth. Think of cosy fireplaces on winter nights. I think 'Calcifer' would be a close enough approximation."

"Calcifer, then."

"Yes. And you are Howell Arthur Morgan Jenkins."

"I'm in your mind too, is that it?"

"You are, and you haven't stopped jabbering since the moment I got your heart," said Calcifer. "I've already learned more about you than you probably know yourself."

"Oh, _great,"_ Howell said. "Well, you'd better tell me the worst, and get it over with."

—o—o—o—o—

Notes:

"_Sut mae?" — _"How's it going?"

"_Ach Brython hefyd?" — _"Are you a Welshman too?"

_Caersiddi _— It's just as Ben translates it, "the revolving castle." Not the name of an actual town, as I have used it here. It was a mythical fortress, described in Robert Graves's book _The White Goddess_ as "revolving, royal, remote, gloomy, lofty, cold...with four corners, entered by a dark door on the shelving side of a hill." Needless to say, the name and description jumped out at me while skimming TWG recently. The book is subtitled "A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth" and has much to say about ancient Welsh legends and beliefs together with a whole lot of other stuff, some of it (in my opinion) mind-blowingly insightful, and some of it (again in my opinion) codswallop. A classic, though. I'm sure DWJ owns a copy.

"_This is the place I came from"—_ See HMC, Chapter 15. "Mrs. Pentstemmon is being buried tomorrow on her estate near Porthaven," Howl says. A moment later, in trying (not at all successfully) to make Sophie feel sorry for him, he gives a good indication of what the local climate is like: "It's a bitter place, the Pentstemmon estate. The trees are all bent sideways and there's no shelter for miles."

_It was like many places in Wales _— From _The Guardian, _9/17/03: "I tried hard to dissuade (Miyazaki's studio crew) from going to Cardiff, and suggested that a smaller Welsh town would be better. They seemed not to understand the nature of the moorland where Howl's castle is (most of the time), or what a fishing village looked like." – DWJ, quoted in Andrew Osmond's article "Just Don't Go to Cardiff."

_Little Saurons_—I suppose not everyone who names their home "Rivendell" is a Tolkien reader, but I'm willing to bet Howl is.


	3. Part Three

xiv.

Megan was due at any moment and, as usual, Gareth and Neil were not living up to her expectations.

"Neil, you're going to have to do your lessons without me to hold your hand, for once. All this term you've been setting yourself up for failing marks. Guess it's too late now, nothing to be done, not with this baby having to come along and all. Gareth, just go on down and do this night shift of yours, never mind that I'm going to have another of your children. Not that it will make a bit of difference; you'll make bollocks of this job, just like all the others. For God's sake try _not_ swearing at the foreman this time! And _you, _Howell. For once in your life you're going to have to do something useful and drive me in to hospital. Or have you lost the keys to your car again?"

Funny, wasn't it, how it always turned out this way—Howell Jenkins, heroically stepping into the breach. A year or so before, Neil had let slip that the mortgage was in arrears. Howell, whose name was still on the deed even though with each visit he felt less and less welcome in the home, had quietly taken care of it. He never said anything about it. Neither did Megan nor Gareth, and Howell continued to feel unwelcome.

But now his sister was talking about having him move back into the front bedroom. Of course he'd be delighted to stay up nights pacing the floor with Megan's little contraception lapse—"you were just _so_ good with Neil! We've never forgot how you took charge when Mummy was _so_ sick and _so _depressed..." To hear Megan referring to herself in third-person baby-talk was nearly the final straw.

Not that it mattered. By default he became chauffeur and birthing coach, because someone had to do it. He felt completely unqualified for the latter. He had studied anatomy and physiology, and watched a couple of births on the television. There his expertise ended. But the hospital staff seemed pleased to have him there. His was as convenient a shoulder as any for Megan to cry on—or as it turned out, to scream at. Poor girl. She'd insisted upon a horrifically unnatural procedure called "natural childbearing." Seven hours on, Meg had about exhausted herself, and there was no end in sight. They didn't call it 'labour' for nothing.

Mrs. P. had taught him that only in the direst need was the human organism to be tampered with. Well, if this wasn't dire, then nothing was. Howell gave Meggie just a little something for strength and ease of the pains. It seemed to help her through the long hours that remained.

At about a quarter past ten the next morning—a misty-moisty Welsh Tuesday—Meg's ordeal ended. From somewhere beneath the white cloths that draped her, the midwife drew a slimy, glistening, purple-pink girl-child. They cut her long umbilical cord. They weighed her, looked her over, expertly administered a puff of oxygen, and then Mari Rose Elizabeth Parry gave her first cry: as potent a word of power ever uttered, for it cast an enchantment over her Uncle Howell that lasted to the end of his days.

They quickly bathed her. They fit with her a nappie and a soft white gown. They brushed her wispy yellow curls and pulled a tiny knitted cap over them. Then they wrapped her in a pale green blanket and placed her in Megan's arms.

Megan smiled crookedly at Mari, held her for twenty seconds, then turned over and went to sleep. She'd already flat-out told anyone who'd listen that she was not going to wet-nurse. The midwife turned questioningly to Howell, but he had already taken Mari in his arms. It came easily and naturally to him, as though no time at all had passed since the hours he had spent warming Neil's formula, changing his nappies, watching him grow.

But what a night! Howell was utterly wrung out; he could only imagine how Megan felt. Yet maybe it was just as well; he would be the one to cast the first spell, incoherent and sleep-deprived though he was. "You are loved, Mari," he said over and over. "You are loved. You are loved. You are loved." He said it until at last he fell asleep in the chair next to Meggie's bed, with little Mari contentedly dreaming on his shoulder.

—o—

xv.

For the next three weeks he hardly slept, but it didn't matter. Heart or no heart, Howell adored Mari. He rocked her, fed her, bathed her, tunelessly sang to her, dressed her in soft warm things he conjured when no one was looking. And he talked to her incessantly, at all times aware of Mrs. Pentstemmon's admonition: "Have a care when you speak. You are the most powerful spellcaster I have ever seen. You have the power to bless or curse with a thoughtless word. Watch yourself."

"You won't take things to heart, will you, little cariad?" he would whisper as he held his tiny, perfect little niece. "One day you'll find that your mam loves you, really, and she doesn't mean half the things she says. Her words won't hurt you and make you cross and sad like her. You'll understand and you'll be loving to her and your dad and Neil. You'll know they love you every bit as much as I do."

—o—

xvi.

His life in Ingary seemed lonelier than ever now. He'd not met any girls in either world, and the people closest to him in this one, Mrs. Pentstemmon and Ben Sullivan, were at the other end of it, in Kingsbury.

Of course, there was Calcifer, who certainly provided companionship of a sort; for one thing, he talked incessantly. Because there was so much of Howell in the fire demon, his utterances reflected (in a weird, unsettling way) the contents of Howell's mind—which sometimes were bloody brilliant, but mostly were just nerdy and pedantic. Had he been like that at school? No wonder Howell could never get a date.

But Calcifer was clever and curious about everything. In many ways he was like a small child: filled with wonder at this strange world he had come to inhabit with its sound and colour, touch and taste and smell. "There are so many days, you don't even _know_ how many, Howell, when I'd like just to pop right up through the chimney," he would say. "Take a little spin around the countryside, maybe go see the capital. It's boring, having nothing to look at all day but sooty bricks."

"Nothing's stopping you," Howell would point out. "Your magic's light-years beyond mine."

"I know that, Howell. But we have a contract, remember? My part of the deal is staying here in the hearth with the heart."

"Yes. But _if_ you chose to go flitting off, there would be nothing to stop you."

"And I don't choose. Got that? Not so difficult, is it?

"You're a better man than I am, Calcifer."

"I'm not. I can't be. I'm you."

—o—

xvii.

The lonely months passed. A year went by, and then another. The following winter was harder than usual—bitingly cold, with sudden gales and monstrous seas. Howell had plenty of business but not much income. The local people had to keep on fishing or they would starve, but few could pay for the enhanced fish-calling and boat-holding-together spells that were now in demand. Howell charged them accordingly.

"This heart of yours," Calcifer remarked. "Soft as butter, isn't it?"

The last storm of the season was the worst, with so much wind and rain that Howell was housebound for three days. On the fourth morning the sky was as blue, the clouds as bright and buoyant, as though winter were a figment of some storyteller's imagination.

He scraped together enough coins to buy a loaf of bread. He was marvelling at the warmth and sunshine as he took one step out his front door and fell flat.

"Bloody effing—!" He'd skinned his knees and torn his trousers. The trousers he could mend; the knees just plain hurt.

A sneeze issued from a lumpy pile of rags that lay across the doorstep. Then a small boy emerged, teeth chattering, dark eyes looking miserable and scared. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Go on inside," Howell said, a bit testily. "Get yourself warm and dry. Calcifer will heat you some bath water. Tell him I said so. Eat anything you can find. I'll be back later."

Five minutes later, Howell had forgot him. There was quite a crowd in the square. The fine weather had brought even the local swells down from their grand houses in the hills. One of them, a squire with a neatly trimmed black beard and a hard look in his eye, was walking arm-in-arm with the most beautiful woman Howell had ever seen.

She had crimson hair, elaborately curled, and a creamy smooth complexion. It was impossible to guess her age. The villagers all kept a respectful distance from this splendid couple who'd come into town to scatter gold. Howell, unimpressed, felt no compunction about drawing near them. From close by he could see the intricate net of cosmetic spells crawling all over the woman. He wondered how old she really was.

She caught his eye, and her glance conveyed a great deal: that she was bored with the toffee-nose upon whose arm she was displayed like the ultimate trophy, that she was powerful, sensual, and highly intelligent, and that she liked Howell's looks very much indeed.

Howell knew all about older women frankly offering themselves to younger men. The thought was both tantalizing and terrifying, but mostly terrifying. With a great effort of will, he turned and walked away.

Inside the baker's, everyone was talking. "Oh, no, she's not his wife. He's already buried three of them, you know." By the time Howell came out with a loaf of bread and a basket of muffins, the woman and her not-husband were gone. Now that he was no longer skewered by her gaze, she seemed easily enough forgotten. But something remained, lodged in the void inside him like the tip of an arrow: a restlessness, a dissatisfaction, a hunger.

It wasn't until he got home that Howell remembered the bundle of rags he'd tripped over. It now sat huddled before Calcifer, wrapped, or rather engulfed, in one of Howell's old dressing-gowns.

"What's your name?" Howell said, as the boy devoured two-thirds of the loaf without stopping to butter it.

"Michael." The reply was muffled by a mouthful of bread. "Fisher."

"I see," Howell said. "Then you must be one of the famous Porthaven Fishers. Very important family in these parts, I believe?"

Michael laughed so hard at this rather poor joke that he choked.

"Easy there—!" Howell jumped to his feet, prepared to perform a Heimlich manoeuver, but with the aid of a glass of milk Michael recovered.

"I'm just laughing because nearly everyone around here is named Fisher," Michael said.

"I know. My name is like that, too," Howell said. "Where I come from, nine-tenths of everybody is called Jenkins."

Michael nodded, then grew serious. "I know what people say," he said, "but you don't seem evil to me, Sorcerer Jenkin."

"You may call me Howell, if you like."

"Thanks, Howl!" Michael said eagerly. These Ingarians never _could _seem to get his name right. But he was growing to like the sound of "Howl," which managed to suggest both wolfishness and rock stardom.

"How old are you, Michael?"

"Fourteen, next May Day."

Fourteen! He looked hardly ten, poor kid.

—o—

xviii.

It was distressing, what Michael had told him: that lately the townsfolk had begun to whisper that Howell's house was filled with devils. He knew what they were talking about, of course.

He wished he had done more research when he had the chance—before he met Calcifer, in other words. All he could remember from his studies was that human possession by fire demons was rare; only one or two cases were mentioned in the histories, and those were long in the past.

Even Mrs. Pentstemmon had had little to say on the subject, and that mostly in the form of dark hints. Lately Howell found himself harbouring an uneasy sense of guilt, for he knew, somehow, that Mrs. P. would sternly and vehemently disapprove of his arrangement with Calcifer.

And yet, he reassured himself, she had never told him _not _to rescue a fallen star.

—o—

xix.

In the weeks that followed, Michael either bustled about the house trying to be useful, or kept very quiet and still in the hope that Howell would forget he was there.

Obviously he expected Howell to turn him out at any moment. Obviously the prospect terrified him, for clearly he had no place to go.

Howell was abysmal at handling this sort of thing. Strong emotions of any sort embarrassed him—yet more residual of his troubled childhood. To ask Michael outright what had happened was to throw open the doors not only to Michael's painful memories, but to his own as well.

Better just to let Michael be. Maybe he would come to it in his own time. Maybe by then it would not be quite so uncomfortable for either of them.

—o—

xx.

For some months the Waste had been encroaching upon inhabited lands, swallowing bits of Ingary as it came. The King was concerned.

It lay far off to the southeast, a harsh, wind-scoured region that no self-respecting country in that world would claim—not even the desert kingdom of Rashpuht. But the Waste had an evil aura that came from far more than its barrenness and scorching heat.

"It feels like magic to me," Howell said, as he and Ben stood looking out upon a vast expanse of fitful sulfurous wetlands giving way to sand, hundreds of miles of it. It was so flat and empty that they could see, against far-distant mountains, the curving rim of the world.

"Agreed," Ben said. "I think I know the source of it, too." He fell silent, and Howell didn't prompt him. Mrs. Pentstemmon had sent Howell along to learn, and as Ben was a slow, careful talker, there was no point in getting impatient.

"Hywel, what did Mrs. Pentstemmon teach you about the history of this place?" Ben said at last.

"Quite a bit. But she never said anything about the Waste."

"Nothing at all?"

"Nothing."

Ben looked out at the emptiness, and it was a long time before he spoke again. "Mrs. Pentstemmon is committed to the use of magic to do good. If there is any flaw in all her learning and wisdom, and her ability to impart them to her pupils, it is a reluctance to discuss the power of evil."

"That's true," Howell said, reflecting on all she had taught him. "If the subject ever turned to dark magic—and I was always the one who brought it up, and _not_ because I wanted to do any—she would set her mouth and become silent and withdrawn."

"Exactly," Ben said. "She believes that merely to speak of evil is to empower it."

"But you need to have some knowledge of evil if you're ever going to fight it."

"That's just it," Ben said. "In many ways this world is very like ours. In other ways it is so very alien that I am often at pains to understand everything that goes on—and worse, to anticipate trouble. Ingary is a good-hearted country. It is also innocent and naive and ripe for invasion. Fortunately, our King is aware of this."

"Do the neighbours know?" Howell said, meaning Low Norland, Strangia, and the rest.

"They do. And so does the Witch of the Waste."

"There's a witch out there?"

"There was. By all rights she should have been dead thirty years ago. But I am beginning to wonder."

—o—

xxi.

Howell came downstairs every morning to find Michael curled up asleep on the hearth in front of Calcifer. Of course the lad never complained; he was happy just to be in out of the weather.

After several weeks of this, Howell's embarrassment at his lack of hospitality had got the better of his embarrassment at seeming soft-hearted and kind. "Michael, I've got a storeroom upstairs that's so filled with rubbish I've forgot what half of it is. If you'll clean it out for me, I'll see if we can't find a cot to set up in there for you, something more comfortable than the floor."

"Thanks, Howl!" Michael said fervently. Then he started to tear up, which was Howell's cue to leave before he too got all blubbery.

Hours later, when Howell got home, Michael was struggling down the stairs with a stack of old books. "You've certainly got some strange-looking stories here, Howl," Michael remarked, blowing dust off Mam's precious old copies of _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland _and _Through the Looking-glass, The House at Pooh Corner, The Phoenix and the Amulet, The Hobbit, A Wrinkle in Time._ Megan hadn't wanted them and would have got rid of them if Howell hadn't found them first.

If there was anything else of value in that lumber-room, Howell never missed it. A few things ended up in the yard, a few in Howell's room; Calcifer ate the rest.

Michael cobbled together bits of two old bedsteads he'd found in a rubbish heap somewhere. He added a featherbed he'd scrounged from somewhere else. It had a strong mildewy odour and some rather ominous stains, but Michael was delighted with it. "Thanks, Howl!" he said again and again.

—o—

xxii.

In the mild blossom-laden air of early April there came an announcement that caused rejoicing from one end of Ingary to the other: the Queen had given birth to a beautiful healthy daughter. Letters and gifts, ambassadors and delegations from kingdoms near and far, came to honour the child, whom her parents named Valeria.

Within days, there came a second announcement that caused panic and dismay from one end of Ingary to the other.

It had happened at the princess Valeria's christening. The church, thronged with well-wishers and loyal subjects of the King, was suddenly plunged into darkness. Lightning and thunder and vast, malignant imprecations echoed through all its vaults and arches. People ran about screaming; many fled in terror. When the ones who were left dared to open their eyes again, a horrible sight awaited them: a dark form looming over the princess as she lay innocently asleep in her nurse's arms. The thing was beautiful but deathly pale, its lips red with blood. Flames flickered in the depths of its eyes. If not for Wizard Suliman gallantly warding it off with outstretched arms, it—she, rather; it was distinctly feminine—would have seized the child and carried her off to torment her, slay her, or—worst of all—doom her to live forever under a curse.

Some said the creature was a bad fairy, angry at being overlooked when invitations to the christening were send out. Some said she was an wicked sorceress. But Wizard Suliman knew the truth: the Witch of the Waste had returned, more beautiful and terrible than ever before, and she was bent upon revenge against the old King who had banished her—and upon his descendants.

—o—

xxiii.

Everyone handled the news in their own way. Calcifer stayed low in his grate, mulling things over in silence. Howell felt glum and damned annoyed at that old biddy the Witch for spoiling all the fun. But for days afterward Michael was so pale and jittering you'd have thought _he_ was the endangered royal baby.

Howell knew that Michael was shell-shocked from the tragedy that had taken his parents; ever since Michael moved upstairs Howell could hear him in the night, crying out in his nightmares. Howell also knew that it might help Michael to have it all out. But it felt so bloody awkward. Howell was certain he'd make a hash of it, say all the wrong things and leave Michael even worse off than before.

Still, he had to give it a go. He liked Michael, and anyway, who was going to help the kid if Howell didn't do it?

It was evening, a week since they'd heard about the Princess. The evil witch had vanished, and there were no leads. Michael had taken the supper dishes to the sink. He came back to the workbench and sank despondently onto a stool. It was now or never. "Michael," Howell began, "by the time I was thirteen both my parents were dead. What about you?"

Instantly Michael was sobbing inconsolably, and Howell was completely at a loss.

"Here we go again," Calcifer sighed. "Put a blanket over him, then try some warm milk. I'll even bend down."

This unprecedented show of compassion took Howell by surprise. Maybe his heart was doing the fire demon some good.

Howell drew Michael over to the chair by the hearth and handed him the steaming mug. Then he sat down cross-legged on the hearth and waited.

"I guess I should talk about it, but it hurts so much," Michael gulped. "Would you mind going first, Howl?"

"Oh. Well," Howell began. "All right then. You see, my mother got cancer—"

"What's cancer?" Michael said uneasily.

Howell had to think for a moment. "It's what Ingarians call a 'wasting disease.'" This seemed to be the local term for everything from consumption to anorexia.

+-

"My mum died of grippe," Michael said. "She came down sick and coughing with it, and it just got worse and worse, and three weeks later she slipped away." He fell silent.

"What did your dad do, then?" Howell prompted him gently.

"He didn't do anything. He just sat. Then, three weeks to the day after she died, he got up and went back to work. He never said another word about her."

Howell, lost in his own bad memories, did not reply.

"What about _your_ dad, Howl?" Michael said politely.

"Far too fragile and selfish to go back to work," Howell said. "Turned to drinking instead. Took it out on my sister and me."

"You have a sister?" Michael brightened up a little. "Oh, I wish I had a sister. I always wanted one."

_I think you'd find it a mixed blessing,_ Howell thought. "I do," he said. She lives a long way from here. She has a husband and two children." He thought of Mari, and his bitterness eased a little. "Drink is a particularly hideous way to go," he added, before Michael could go off into fantasies of happy family life. "It eats out the liver, you know."

"That was too bad of him," Michael said stoutly. "He should have taken even better care of you, worked even harder. That's what my dad did, until—"

"The storms last winter," Howell said.

"Yes. That one in February that came up so suddenly—" Tears were running down Michael's face. Howell marvelled at how easily he cried.

"Nobody who went out that day came back," Michael said. "Part of the hull of my dad's boat washed up a week later. They knew it by the green eye he had painted on the prow. They think it was thrown on the Pinnacle Rocks, up the coast from here. That's why they have the bell-buoys, to warn anybody who sails in too close. But the seas that day were too much even for the bell-buoys."

Now that it was coming out, Michael talked in torrents. "I'd always heard that when you lost you parents no one wanted you," he said. "I never believed that. Porthaven is my home. There have been Fishers here for a thousand years. But it was true. They all turned their backs on me. I was bad luck, you see. And I couldn't pay rent. How was I supposed to pay rent? I offered to work for the landlord, but he didn't want me, either. He turned me out."

Somehow, Howell knew just who that landlord was. "Black-bearded, mean-eyed fellow who's got plenty of money already?"

"That's the one. You know! How did you know?"

"Saw him in the marketplace, the day you came." Howell did not mention the tall auburn-haired woman who'd been with him. The thought of her made his heart turn over, and not in a good way.

"He owns half the province," Michael said. "Everyone's afraid of him. They hate him, too."

"With good reason, I'd imagine," Howell said.

—o—

xxiv.

And then there was more bad news, dreadful news. Howell had sensed it, even before the King's messengers arrived in Porthaven: the Royal Wizard Suliman, charged with making an end to the Witch of the Waste, had gone missing and was presumed dead.

Saddened and horrified, Howell thought of Ben's family in Monmouthshire and wondered what on earth he could to do to help. Nothing, he was sure. He was abysmal, _really_ abysmal at this sort of thing. Why couldn't wicked witches just stay the hell where they belonged, and leave civilised folk alone?

—o—

xxv.

Michael turned fourteen on the first of May. When he saw the birthday cake Howell bought him, he almost burst into tears. Thankfully, he didn't; it would just have caused more awkwardness.

It was chocolate all the way through. They gave Calcifer a big slice, but what the fire demon _really_ enjoyed was munching the candles. Michael and Howell devoured the rest.

"So, Michael," Howell ventured. "Before—before, well, you know, before that, what were you planning on doing with your life?"

"The only thing I ever wanted to do," Michael said, licking his fingers. "Become apprentice to my dad."

_Bad turn, that, _Howell thought. _At least when I got cut loose on the world, I had prospects._

"Michael," he began.

"Yes, Howl?"

"Michael, I am not a fisherman. Too great a coward, if you want to know the truth. I can't begin to replace your dad, or teach you what he would have done. All I know is magic. But you're of age to apprentice, and, as you can see, I've got an opening for one. Are you interested?"

Michael stood up, joy all over his face. Then just as suddenly he sank onto the stool again, crestfallen. "No, it'll never work. I've been told again and again that I've got no magical talent whatsoever. Not even a drop."

Howell had been afraid of this. "Well, now," he began, casting a meaning glance at Calcifer, "sometimes talent lies deeply hidden, and it requires training to coax it out." He was making this up as he went along; his own talent had been so _not _hidden that it had burst the bounds of space-time.

"That's very generous," Michael said directly. "But I know you're just trying to spare my feelings. Don't worry about it, Howl. You have already been very kind."

Howell tried again. "No, really. Nearly everyone has some latent magic gift. It's just a matter of finding it." With Calcifer's help he cast the spell as gently as he could. "We can start you off slowly. There are functional as well as mystical aspects to the study of enchantments. Mechanical things, you might say. They must be mastered first."

In reality it was usually not so clear-cut. Howell always learned in a mad, holistic jumble. But he sensed that Michael might find a more linear approach less overwhelming.

"We'll set you to learning botany and chemistry—"

Michael looked altogether mystified. Apparently these were words not used much in this part of Ingary.

"Botany is mushrooms, herbs, and other plants. Chemistry is metals, earths, and minerals. You'll need to master all the ways in which they react with one another, and what happens when people eat them, drink them, or apply them to their skin. What harms, what heals, and so on. Are you interested?"

"Sure," Michael said gamely.

"Good, then. And look on the bright side. If we find out in the end that the magical potential just isn't there, you will at least have mastery of every medical compound there is to be found in this world. You'll be the best apothecary in the history of Ingary."

"Really? That's great!" Michael said, much more enthusiastically. "Erm, what's an apothecary?"

—o—o—o—o—o—

Note:

"...At the princess Valeria's christening"—I was thinking of _The Sleeping Beauty_ here, only thanks to Ben _this_ princess wasn't doomed to a long enchanted sleep. There's a _Sleeping Beauty _allusion in HMC, Chapter 14, when Howl tells Sophie, "I could go and play bad fairy at my own christening if I wanted. Maybe I did and that's my trouble."


	4. Part Four

Warnings: Ancient Welsh poetry. Quantum physics. Adorable nieces.

—o—o—o—

xxvi.

And so began the final year of the short unhappy life of Howell Jenkins—a life of lost chances, wasted potential, mistaken assumptions, errors, miscalculations, and plain stupidity.

As boys do, Michael shot up and filled out. This was no thanks to Howell's earnest but haphazard parenting. After worrying for months whether Michael was getting enough to eat, Howell recalled that he himself had grown to be six foot plus on little more than spaghetti on toast. After that he relaxed.

Since none of his old clothes fit Michael, Howell got him new ones, of the best quality he could afford. Michael was doubtful at first; he wasn't used to good linen shirts and sturdy trousers with sharp up-to-date vests. He seemed embarrassed, in fact. "Michael, I can't have my apprentice going about in rags, you know," Howell said.

The apprenticeship itself had got off to a rocky start. Michael was slow and methodical, yet clumsy. When he got frustrated he'd accidentally break things. Then he'd sink into a frowning gloom and call himself all sorts of awful names. Neither botany nor chemistry, with their long lists of strange words to be memorized, came easily to him. There were days when Howell wondered whether Michael was going to make it as an apothecary, let alone a magician.

Howell wasn't terribly concerned. He'd come to think of Michael as a kid brother and a friend, with the master-apprentice arrangement merely an added pretext for making Michael feel part of the household.

Michael was dead serious about it, though. He threw himself at the lessons Howell set him, beating himself over the head with them long after Howell had given it up and gone to bed.

In return, Howell learned a thing or two from Michael, most importantly patience. And Michael's stubbornness showed Howell what he himself could have accomplished if he'd ever got off his arse and really applied himself.

In the meantime, business was fine, money sufficient to get by. Outwardly, at least, their lives had achieved a pleasant day-to-day contentment. Even on his worst days Michael sang more than he frowned, and Calcifer always joined in. But Howell felt anxious, more and more so as the summer wore on, and he didn't know why.

—o—

xxvii.

The trouble had been coming on for some time, a growing sense of restlessness and unease worse than anything he had ever known. Like Mr. Baggins he felt _thin and stretched_—though not so much like butter scraped over too much bread as like a flensed fish gaping on a Porthaven vendor's stall. He was subject to the vilest anxieties, to fears both vague and nightmarish, crowding his thoughts and poisoning his dreams.

It had done strange things to him, giving his heart to Calcifer. There was a coldness inside him now, an ill wind that blew from deep within. He felt like a freak, misshapen and hideous. He needed constant reassurance that he was still beautiful and desirable and good, and unlike anything else he had ever wanted he was willing to work very hard to procure it.

By means of his art he painstakingly crafted the most charming, good-looking persona he could contrive. Then he set out to convince every young lady he met that she should love him. And he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Some were drawn to his intellect, some to his fashion sense and courtly manners, and some—a very few—to his genuine goodness and sweetness. With some it was only a matter of days; others took longer. But one by one, he brought them all to the point of pledging undying love to him.

And in that moment, in every moment like it, he was healed. He knew such joy and relief at the sight of those eyes glowing with wonder and adoration, those sweet red mouths wanting, _needing_ to be kissed—he'd even managed it a time or two—and then—

Suddenly—

Nothing.

Extinction. Annihilation. The absolute certainty that falling in love would be the end of him.

And in terror for his life he ran away. Later Calcifer and Michael would rage at him about weeping, broken-hearted girls with vengeful male relations and hideous, terrible aunts. With good reason, of course.

But Calcifer and Michael did not _know _and could not understand.

As for the girls, they were better off without him.

—o—

xxviii.

Everywhere he turned, there was cause for despair. For weeks, he'd been concerned about his family in Wales. But he'd grown reluctant to stop at home. Gareth and Megan were truculent as ever. Neil would speak to his uncle Howell only over a computer game.

Mari, now three, was such a bundle of potential... He couldn't think of her without smiling. He had shielded her with every ward and spell he could think of, but in his home world there was only so much that magic could do.

He gave Calcifer an extra log and set Michael a spell that was complex yet do-able, if Michael would only figure out that he needed to break it down into pieces. "I'll be gone until some time tomorrow," he said.

"Idiot," Calcifer said pleasantly. "One of these days the god of love is going to exact blood-curdling revenge upon you."

"When that day comes I'll handle it," Howell retorted. "It's my problem, you know."

"I rather think it's my problem too," Calcifer said.

Michael gave them both a baffled look, but said nothing. He was still new enough to the household to want to avoid making any waves. Anyway, he knew nothing about the contract.

Howell transported to a portal he'd discovered in the hills above Porthaven and slipped right through into the Swansea city centre, changing his clothes as he went. He caught a bus up to the stop nearest Megan's, then walked past endless dreary terraces. It was of course a chilly wet morning in South Wales; was there any other kind?

He went round the back alley and let himself in through the unlocked gate.

Mari was sitting on her swing, dragging her feet through the wet grass and looking moodily off into space. She was alone. Her eyes were puffy, as though she had been crying.

It made him want to cry himself, but instead he put on the old brave face. "Is that my cariad?"

Mari flew off the swing and into his arms so fast that Howell knew there had to be more magic in the family than his.

She was all smiles now, chattering in Welsh, her tears forgotten. He knew that he represented all the pleasant places in her imagination into which she could retreat when the family got to be too much. But when the family wasn't even on deck, absent when they ought to be watching over their tiny golden-haired angel and protecting her, what then?

"Cariad, where's your tad?"

"At work, I think."

"What about your mam?"

"Mam doesn't feel well. She told me to turn off that horrible racket on the telly and go outside and let her rest."

Howell tried to conceal his dismay from Mari. Megan and Gareth always insisted that theirs was an excellent neighbourhood, virtually crime-free, and on and on. Which was true enough. But there were other dangers in the world—

"Uncle Howell, what's the matter?"

"Nothing, cariad. Let's go inside."

Megan was asleep in the downstairs sitting-room with a half-melted ice-bag sliding off her forehead. Had she taken to drink? She may as well have; here it was the middle of the morning and she was bloody well passed out. At times like this Howell yearned to assume custody of Mari and take her off to live with him in Ingary. She would be happy there. He would bring her up as a proper magician—

But the stern voice he heard in his mind, reminding him of his total unsuitability to be guardian of a three-year-old, was not Megan's; it was Mrs. Pentstemmon's.

Angrily, he waved his hand and every light in the place, the television too, came roaring on. "Margaret Anna Rose Jenkins Parry," he said. "It's nine-thirty. Do you know where your children are?"

Megan sprang up, sending her ice-bag flying with a splat against the telly. "Howell? Don't you start on me! What are you doing here?"

He was so angry he wanted to level the villa and Megan right along with it. It would have been so easy. For his niece's sake he didn't.

"Sorry you're unwell," he said, still holding Mari as he bent to retrieve the ice-bag. "Mari's worried about you too. At least I think that's why she was sitting out in the rain crying her eyes out."

"You're always poisoning her against me, aren't you, Howell? Aren't you?"

"Oh, Mam!" Mari cried, holding her little arms out to Megan.

Never once had Howell spoken ill to Mari about her parents. They were the most important people in Mari's world, far more important than a visiting uncle ever could be.

But still—

"Howell, we live decently around here. Unlike you and the rest of the hippie riffraff at college, we have standards. We don't associate with criminals and child molesters."

"Megan," he said slowly, "you're too bright a girl to go deluding yourself this way. If you knew half of what's out there—"

"Don't you lecture me about what really goes on in the world, Howell! You in your ivory-tower fantasy land—"

"Megan, the child was completely alone and unsupervised! Do you think criminals and child molesters give a rat's arse about your decent little neighbourhood?"

Quietly, Mari said, "Uncle Howell, I think we should let Mam get some more rest. I won't go outside alone any more, I promise."

"Thank you, cariad," he said.

Megan glared.

"I know how to read, Uncle Howell," Mari said, tugging at his hand. "I have this book, _The Cat in the Hat,_ that I can read all by myself. Let's go upstairs. I'll show you."

As a child he had watched Megan having to play the grown-up after Mam was gone and Tad had fallen to pieces. It was very hard to see Mari now taking that burden onto her tiny shoulders.

—o—

xxix.

Oh, _hell._ A royal summons. Which meant an all-expenses-_not_-paid trip to Kingsbury. Which meant spending money he didn't have, kicking his heels among the powder-puffs of the court, and enduring a brief yet anxiety-ridden session with His Majesty—who, since Ben's disappearance, had shown entirely too much interest in Howell.

But none of this was as daunting as the prospect of confronting Mrs. Pentstemmon, who desired—and expected—her former students to call on her whenever they came to the capital.

She would know something had gone very wrong with her star pupil the moment she set eyes on him.

It was the front-end of November, cold and raining, when Howell left Porthaven on the eve of his royal appointment. After an easy transport to the heart of beautiful downtown Kingsbury, he found himself with an entire evening to kill. The ideal time to pop in on Mrs. P., of course.

He went to a show instead. You just didn't get the caliber of theater in the north of Ingary that you got in Kingsbury. And Mrs. Pentstemmon always emphasized the importance of availing yourself of every cultural opportunity.

He never thought of ordering up tickets in advance, so he had to take what he could get, a nose-bleed seat at a visiting performance by the Royal Opera of Strangia.

Strangian opera was not for everybody, though Howell liked it well enough. It featured convoluted, incomprehensible plots, dark throbbing music, and costumes that were beautiful in a heavy, ugly sort of way. That night's performance marked the Ingarian premiere of _Rage and Retribution, or, The Incestuous Duke,_ a tragedy/farce of the type well loved by the Strangian people, with the usual disguised lovers, stolen babies, and explosions. For three hours Howell was able to forget his adopted country's deepening difficulties, not to mention his own problems.

He spent the night tossing and turning in the nearest thing to a cheap inn in Kingsbury. It was always too bloody hot there to sleep. He awoke with a blinding headache. After paying the innkeeper he stumbled to the nearest kiosk and drank mug after mug of Rajpuhti coffee so thick and black you could pave a road with it. Before long he was manically alert and anxious as ever about visiting Mrs. Pentstemmon.

The perpetual flea market, just off the King's Highway, made an excellent distraction. There was no junk in this world or any other like Kingsbury junk, most of it discarded by its noble owners after they'd worn it or used it once: magnificent clothing and hats, shoes and boots, jewelry, dishes, crystal, old sterling and gold plate, books, extravagant toys, musical instruments, art objects both beautiful and grotesque—and of course talismans, charms, and magical objects of all sorts. Several years before he'd bought the used seven-leaguers for a song from an old woman named Mab whose gaudy tent was a permanent fixture of the market. He was pleased to find her still in business.

Mab's specialty was magical goods, and she had an eye for the bizarre. An hour spent browsing her wares was always an education in the dark underside of the Ingarian psyche. Whereas Ingary participated in a sort of fairy-tale christendom, it was also a primitive, not-quite-pagan, dream-haunted realm. The same symbols and archetypes were base-wired into the nervous system of humans everywhere. But here, in a world of working magic, you could wear your complexes and neuroses on your sleeve (and by turning them into toads, compel others to exhibit theirs). It made Ingary seem dangerous and far more exciting than home. At home it was far too easy just to "look good" and pretend, like poor Megan, that nothing was wrong. Yet that was even more dangerous. Either type of mental organization could—and did—produce monsters. It was all in whether you preferred meeting them in your dreams—where you could repress them indefinitely—or standing solidly before you in the light of day, whiffling and burbling and impossible to ignore.

The moment he entered Mab's tent shop, every gewgaw in the place came to life, twittering and jangling and calling out spells. This was typical magical-object behavior in the presence of a wizard, and Howell paid no attention to it. His eye was drawn immediately to the far wall, where in a pool of silence a guitar rested on a stand. He had seen that guitar before. He had even heard it, exquisitely played, while a rich deep voice sang:

_Bûm yn dy garu lawer gwaith,_  
_Do lawer awr mewn mwynder maith._  
_Bûm yn dy gusanu Lisa gêl,_  
_Yr oedd dy gwmni'n well na'r mêl..._

_Pan fyddwy'n rhodio gyda'r dydd,_  
_Fy nghalon fach sy'n mynd yn brudd,_  
_Wrth glywed swn yr adar mân_  
_Daw hiraeth mawr am Lisa Lân._

It was Ben's.

The sight of it there, mute in the midst of a roomful of noisy magic, broke Howell's heart. Plainer than any word or sign, it stated, flatly and finally, that Ben was dead.

Reverently he lifted it from the stand. It seemed unbearably precious, weighted as it was with the memory of his countryman, and their home.

In a clatter of bracelets and beads old Mab approached. "Interesting choice, sir," she said. "I got it from an old man who said he got it from a witch he found bashing it against a dustbin, shrieking that she couldn't break the wretched thing to save her life and that there was some kind of wicked spell in it.

"Make of that what you will, sir, we've had no magical difficulties with it, but no buyers either. Strange. I can't imagine anyone wanting to destroy such a beautiful instrument. Do you play, sir?"

"I don't."

Mab looked crestfallen, but brightened when she saw Howell reaching for his purse. He meant to buy the guitar no matter what it cost.

It cost plenty, every penny he'd budgeted for the day—just enough to skip lunch, stop at a grocer's après-King for a meat pie, a jug of wine, and a basket of the luscious southern fruit that was in season, then transport home with the lot for his and Michael's supper.

Mab went behind a curtain to wrap the guitar. Howell waited uneasily at the cash desk, over which a rather loud disclaimer had been posted: "NO WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ON MAGICAL APPLIANCES. NO EXCHANGES. NO REFUNDS. NO INDEMNITY IN THE EVENT OF ACCIDENTAL CURSING, DISMEMBERMENT, OR DEATH. DON'T MISS OUR HARVEST FESTIVAL SALE DAYS." He was worrying again, about what Mrs. Pentstemmon's eagle eyes would see and what unpleasantness the King would ask of him and what Michael would say when Howell came home with no dinner and a guitar he did not know how to play.

Then he noticed, among the dusty bric-à-brac piled on the shelf behind the counter, a human skull.

The thing was looking at him.

Hurriedly he looked away. Mab came out with the parcel and a receipt, thanked Howell for his purchase, then turned to greet a pair of customers who'd just walked in.

Chilled to the bone, Howell muttered his thanks and hurried past the skull. He could feel its empty eye sockets following him. He had left the tent and was out in the street when suddenly, with a resonant chime, a spell came spiraling up out of the guitar, unwrapped itself, then floated, shimmering, just before his eyes:

_Primary chief bard am I to Elphin,  
__And my original country is the region of the summer stars. _

Howell stopped in his tracks.

Then he turned and resolutely went back into the tent. Not bad work for a coward like himself, particularly when it came to anything redolent of death, in particular the death—or undeath—of someone he knew. Mab had gone off with her customers. And from that desperately unhappy skull, ancient poetry was pouring out:

_I was with my Lord in the highest sphere;_  
_On the fall of Lucifer into the depth of hell._  
_I have borne a banner before Alexander._  
_I know the names of the stars from north to south._  
_I have been on the Galaxy at the throne of the Distributor._

Ben—it had to be Ben; only another Welshman would know _The Book of Taliesin—_was crying out from some realm beyond the material, the remaining fragments of his body and soul cleaving to the ancient words:

_I was at the place of the crucifixion of the merciful Son of God._  
_I have been three periods in the prison of Arianrhod._  
_I have been the chief director of the work of the tower of Nimrod._  
_I am a wonder whose origin is not known._

—o—

xxx.

Howell reported dutifully to the palace at one hour past noon. Palace regulations regarding wrapped parcels, weapons, and other suspicious objects spared him having to think about his newly-purchased guitar-and-skull set; once deposited at the Office of the Royal Valet, they were out of sight and out of mind until he called for them at the end of the day.

Next came the interminable heel-kicking portion of the proceedings. Besides Howell, a few grim-faced regimental types in the green uniform of the Royal Inglish Guard were waiting in the anteroom. They spoke neither to Howell nor to one another. Each was called in separately and did not come out for a very long time. When they did they looked even grimmer. One more thing to worry about.

Bored and restless, Howell picked up a book that was lying on a side table. Its cover was richly ornamented but otherwise unmarked. When he opened it, Howell's spirits sank even lower: _Mrs. Pentstemmon's Path: Signposts to the Truth._ The dear lady was a prolific author as well as a great teacher, and this was her latest work.

He knew bloody well that if he put the book down without first having a look, Mrs. P. was going to know about it. Resigned, he opened it to the first page, and began:

"_We enter the world with nothing, and we leave it with nothing. Along the way we may acquire something. We may in fact acquire a great deal._

_It does not belong to us._

_It may be taken from us at any time. We may lose it foolishly. We may be asked to give it up. The more precious to us, the more essential to all that we believe we are or should be, the greater is our need to become willing to lay it down and walk away._

_So much evil comes of clinging to that which never belonged to us to begin with: success, health, fortune; even our native gifts._

_Our very life is not ours to keep."_

Such words made him feel doubly ashamed and ungrateful, and deeply at odds with bloody everything. Like Michael and Calcifer, Mrs. Pentstemmon simply didn't _know. _Howell had gladly given away the part of him that Mam had shattered by dying, that Tad had bruised and battered, that Megan in her coldness had rejected—the part of him that for all her wisdom and her loving attention to him, Mrs. P. could neither touch nor heal. He had willingly surrendered his heart so that Calcifer could live. Yet so much evil had come from that...

Thank the gods, a moment later he was called in to see the King.

—o—

xxxi.

Clement XIX, King of Ingary, was as merciful and mild as his name, if a bit overweight. Not that Howell was making light of the man; he was _King,_ after all, and here in Ingary that really meant something.

Howell would have loved to see the look on Megan's face if she ever found out that her layabout little brother was hobnobbing with royalty!

Anyway, the King was the King, and he took his job very seriously. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders and worries that made Howell's seem like nothing. He was also minus his Royal Magician at a time when two of the neighbouring countries were getting belligerent for no good reason that His Majesty (nor Howell, come to that) could see.

"We dislike the idea of a military campaign," the King was saying. "We would dislike it at any time, of course, even if it were necessary. But we simply cannot believe that this present matter is one that calls for a military solution. The war that now threatens is a war of misapprehensions. A war of propaganda. It may even be a war of magic."

Howell shrivelled inwardly. He knew where this was going.

"You are a very young man," said the King. "And furthermore it is our understanding that you are not native to this country. Therefore we do not expect you to grasp the historical weight of the situation that we face—"

"I have made it a point to learn as much Inglish history as I can," Howell offered. In spite of everything, he felt sorry for the King.

"Of course. But still—" The King broke off, studying Howell intently but doubtfully. Then he seem to pull himself together. "Wizard Howl," he said, with almost convincing firmness, "we are not requesting anything of you. Not yet, anyway; before long the forces of history may demand great sacrifice on the part of every Inglish man, woman, and child. For now we would ask you to consider two simple things. One is to be attentive. As you are a wizard you may come upon signs or hints of Wizard Suliman's fate that are not evident to us or other laymen. The other is to be open to the idea of moving your practice to Kingsbury. As you know, we value highly your service in the Porthaven area, but in a time of crisis other arrangements may need to be made."

The King sat back slightly in his chair then, a gesture that Howell knew meant that he was dismissed. He stood, feeling awkward and even less informed that when he came in. "Your Majesty, I most certainly shall consider it," he said, then bowed abruptly and turned to go.

"Thank you, Wizard Howl," said the King.

"Of course, Your Majesty. Your Majesty?"

"Yes, Wizard Howl?"

"Your Majesty, if I may ask, where was Wizard Suliman last seen?"

"About forty-five miles southeast of here, at the edge of the Waste," said the King. "We had sent him to find the Witch of the Waste and put a stop to her for once and for all—an action we have very much come to regret."

"Thank you, Your Majesty."

"Good-bye, Wizard Howl."

—o—

xxxii.

As long as no one knows about it, he thought, there's no harm in having a look. It added only a day or two to his trip. And who knew? If he _did_ succeed in finding Ben, he'd be able to face the King—_and_ Mrs. Pentstemmon—with head held high. And maybe Michael wouldn't mind so much having had to miss a meal or two.

After explaining to Ben's skull and guitar what he was about to do, he'd sent them directly to his bedroom in Porthaven. He was not easy about parting with them, but he took their impassive silence as a sign that it was all right. In order to have time to think and plan, he got a carrier heading southeast and took the ten-hour ride to the end of the line, a sheep station on the western slope of the blue-green mountains that formed the barrier between Ingary and the Waste. As he turned his wagon and headed back down, the waggoner was shaking his head sadly that anyone would be daft enough to ask to be left off in the middle of nowhere.

Howell was not thrilled about it either. He was scared out of his wits, in fact. The only thing that gave him courage was knowing that, in a pinch, he had a fire demon. Any other magician would be asking for it, like poor Ben.

He transported over the mountains to the spot where just a few months before he had stood with Ben, looking across the wasteland toward the curve of the earth against the strange far-off mountains.

He found the terrain so changed that for an instant he wondered if he'd lost not just his bearings but his sanity.

The place was now a riot of flowers, vines, and shrubs, a vast garden far as the eye could see. It was beautiful, alive with butterflies and birds and the gurgle of fresh-running water, and it had gentled the harsh pale sky above the Waste into a serene blue. There was no going around, so he plunged right into the midst of a thicket of roses. There were lilacs, too, and tangles of thorny yellow-bloomed gorse, bottle-brushes, orange-blossoms, oleander, and many others that he did not know. In a natural garden you would never find these things growing all together. Clearly this place was the work of a white magician, and a powerful one at that.

_Llongyfarchiadau, Ben! _Well done! And merciful as well, calling up the natural wells beneath the earth and surrounding the Witch not with death but with life.

He went on. The plantings grew younger. Howell was pleased to help them along, magicking them into bloom as he passed. The ground grew squishy and soft, and soon he was picking his way among pale yellow lotuses, pink-marsh-mallows, and bright green flowering reeds. Before long he had run out of tussocks and was wading knee-deep. The water was hot, though not uncomfortably so, and it bubbled like green soup, brimming with new life. By the time it was up to his waist, with no dry ground in sight, he was certain that at any moment he was going to step in over his head, and that would be the end of him.

All at once he emerged into the open. Before him, closer than ever, the dark mountains loomed like a storm-front. Behind him, the thicket was miles deep. He could see no end to it at all, no geographic points of reference—not even the blue mountains he had just crossed, which jolly well ought to have been there—

_Never turn your back on the Waste._

If he lived through this, he'd see to it that every Ingarian child now and in generations to come learned that warning with their letters.

There was no sound, yet his skin crawled and a sense of dread boiled in his hollow chest. He turned slowly, not knowing what sort of monster had crept up silently behind him, fang and claw at the ready—

It was a woman.

He was miles from any house or town, yet there she was. He had seen her before, or at least he had seen a woman with the same crimson hair and cream complexion. But the woman in the Porthaven market had been mature, though ageless. This woman was young, and distilled in her sweet smile and her loveliness was the essence of every Inglish girl he had courted. Obviously this one had put her considerable arts into crafting a fail-proof persona. Howell was fascinated to meet someone who thought and worked so much like himself.

And he was lonely and in despair of ever leaving his revolving castle of futility.

They fell into an easy conversation. They walked together for what must have been hours but seemed hardly any time at all. He did not at first think it odd when, in the midst of a desolate rocky plain, they came upon lamplit cottage set in a snug hollow beside a tree-lined brook. He did not at first think it too perfect, reminding him as it did of his first visit to Ingary.

"Come in," she said. Her parlour was suitably charming, with velvet settees and delicate, pretty china—very much as Mam had kept things before she grew ill. A fire burned brightly in the hearth.

"Wine?" she said, pouring him something from a crystal flask. He had sense enough not to drink it, but by then it was too late.

—o—

xxxiii.

There was a sudden metallic crash like a portcullis slamming down. The cosy room with the fireplace vanished. He seemed to be in a cavernous chamber. Echoes like hollow laughter rang throughout. It was utterly dark except for sickly green fires off here and there that burned without warmth or light.

He knew that he was deep in the Waste; there was no knowing how deep. Had the Waste ever been measured? Not that it mattered; there were higher magical dimensions into which a heedless witch or wizard could wander and never be heard from again. _Well done, you idiot! Llongyfarchiadau!_

The greenish light grew brighter.

Again she came up silently behind him.

"So good of you to come," she said in a harsh whisper. "He was trying to _kill _me! But you're not like him. Your heart is filled with pity."

"Ben pitied you enough to use a garden against you, not fire or smoke," he said. "It might have helped you, if you had only tried."

He turned. She was shape-shifting rapidly. The beautiful young woman flickered in and out. When she finally attained a solid form she became once again the mature woman of Porthaven beneath her cobweb of cosmetic spells. With a shudder he thought of Mam, all laid out at the mortician's. They had done the best they could with make-up to try to put colour in her sunken cheeks, but to no avail. Mam had looked ghastly and embalmed, and so did the Witch.

"Poor lady," he said, torn between revulsion and the genuine pity that he felt.

"You understand," she said wonderingly. "You're not like that other one, I don't care if he did plant a smelly garden to try to cure me. You just _know_ somehow, don't you?" She withered and shrank into a shrivelled, Gollum-like creature. "And now you see me as a really am," she said. "You don't have to fix yourself up if you're just going to laze about the house all day, you know." Shyly she approached him. When he did not push her away, she laid her face tenderly against his chest.

He tried to comfort her, poor old girl. Some hideously cruel spell was keeping her alive long past her time. He could only imagine what a torment it must be, not living but merely _hanging on._

The cavern seemed to brighten. He almost imagined he could see sunlight through the cracks in the old witch's castle. She was so withered and bent she was hardly any bigger that a child. And still he did not push her away.

"What's your name, my brave young warlock?" she murmured after a time.

With the ease of long habit he promptly supplied a fake one.

"A nice name," she said softly. "Well, Mr. Greenleaf, you are the kindest young man I have ever met. And the most beautiful. And I will be young and beautiful for you. I will be kind in return, and I will learn once again to love flowers and green growing things. Because, you see, I have fallen in love with you."

And with the ease of long habit Howell went cold to the bone, violently wrenching himself from her embrace, stepping back from the brink of extinction before it was too late—

Several things happened at once. The Witch leaped at him, shrieking in rage and despair. The green fires coalesced into one huge blaze that came bearing down on them. In the heart of that fire Howell saw eyes—great dark eyes, cold and brutal. But they were not looking at him.

"Why have you left your hearth? Get back to your hearth!" the Witch cried. But the roaring green flames engulfed her.

Her screams of agony tore his soul to shreds. Amid them he could hear a great throbbing feminine voice emanating from within the fire. It was a voice of terrible power, the voice of a goddess—or a demon—and it cursed the Witch, calling her lazy and stupid and worthless and other names that were horrible and foul.

Then the Witch erupted from the flames. Once again she had taken the form of a delicate, heartbreakingly lovely girl. But she was coming at Howell robotically, one arm raised, palm outward—

Oh, _hell!_ Now he'd done it. She uttered one slow, rolling word of power, and a bolt of lightning erupted from her outstretched palm. In dazed slow-motion he watched it hurtling toward his missing heart.

—o—

xxxiv.

He'd have been hit dead-on if Calcifer hadn't reached through the quantum flux and pulled him clean to Porthaven, leagues away from the Waste.

"Calcifer! Thank the gods! That was brilliant. However did you manage it?"

"I won this round of fire demon pyrotechnics, that's how. I may not win the next one. And there _will _be a next one, you can bet your sweet life on that."

"I know. Calcifer, what on earth are we going to _do?"_

"Well, no use in recriminations. Waste of time and energy. You were up against something far more powerful than yourself. It could have gone much, much worse. So try not to fret, Howell. I think no less of you than I did before."

"Oh, thanks awfully, Calcifer."

"—he said sarcastically."

"Will you just _bugger off?"_ Howell said. "I need time to think."

"You mean mope and drink too much."

"No, damn it, I mean think!"

He spent the rest of the day moping and drinking too much. Hours later, he slunk downstairs and seated himself dejectedly on the hearth.

"Got a plan, then?" Calcifer said with heavy irony.

"Well, bother it anyway! So far nothing comes to mind."

"Mind?" Calcifer snorted. _"Mind?_ At the moment there's nothing inside that skull of yours but a soup of hydrocarbon-derivative breakdown products. Ideal perhaps for thinning paint, but _not_ for figuring out how to outrun a curse that's coming at you at the speed of light."

"You're _so_ bloody compassionate, Calcifer."

"Aren't I, though? But not to worry. While you've been upstairs making sauerkraut of your brains, your faithful slave of a fire demon has been devising a plan."

"I'm all ears," Howell said miserably.

"Good. Now here's the thing. The curse is out there, but like the Cat in the Box, nothing happens until it reaches you."

"You mean the Cat in the Hat," Howell said, thinking of Mari and smiling in spite of everything.

"No, the Cat in the Box. I'm talking about Schrödinger, not Seuss. Think of it this way. You're the Cat. The Witch is an evil mad scientist who's sealed you up in a box rigged with poison gas. All is well until she so-to-speak opens the box, at which point the curse catches up with you and all your potential realities collapse into one: death. Or something even worse."

"Damn it, Calcifer. Don't talk to me about quantum theory when I'm hung over!"

"You need to get serious about this, Howell. The Witch hurled a curse at you. I got you out of there one femtosecond before that curse reached your eardrums. The instant it does, you're done for."

"Oh, _lord."_

"So what we've got to do is keep ahead of it. But that's going to require some heavy space-bending."

"Wait a minute," Michael said, coming downstairs just then. "Howl, you've been back for hours. Where's supper?"

—o—

xxxv.

"Supper," Howell repeated guiltily. "Michael, supper is everywhere."

"What do you mean?"

"Just walk down to the end of the street. Mother Nature's salad bowl awaits you."

"If you're talking about the sea, well, fish aren't salad."

"No, fish are protein. You know that, Michael. I'm talking about something even better. Kelp, laver, dulse, whatever you have around here, it's all filled with good stuff."

Michael gave him a look of blank bafflement. "You mean seaweed?"

"I do."

"Seaweed is slimy. It's nasty. People don't eat it."

"Of course they do! It's got calcium, you know, and phosphorus, magnesium, iron, iodine, sodium, bromine—"

"But that's _chemistry,_ Howl. I can't eat the Periodic Table for supper."

Calcifer raised a fiery eyebrow at Howell. "Haven't you got round to teaching this poor lad that theory has practical applications?"

"Apparently not," Howell said. "Michael, I—"

"It's all right, Howl. I think I know what happened. You spent your Kingsbury money on something else."

Michael's tone was so carefully non-accusatory that Howell instantly felt ten times more guilty and miserable. On the other hand, how could he have _not_ bought the guitar and the skull? With them, he had some hope of finding Suliman alive. Without them, none.

But try explaining that to a hungry teenage boy.

—o—

xxxvi.

"Blew it all on beer and beauty, eh?" Calcifer jeered, after Michael had glumly departed in search of seaweed.

"You don't know all there is to know, Flameball."

"Maybe not, but I know quite a bit. Now, then. Are you interested in hearing my plan, since it's the only plan anyone has bothered to come up with so far ?"

"All right, all right," Howell said. His head was hurting again. "The cat. Bending space. A bit of a tall order for Howell Jenkins, although I do own a copy of William Norland's book on the subject."

"Then you can fine-tune the theoretical work," Calcifer said. "But for powering a transdimensional gateway you're going to need an energy source of cosmic proportions. The gravity well of a star, for example. Good job you own one of those too—fire demon slave labour, right at your fingertips!"

"And here I thought I was just a doomed cat."

"You are. But you also get to be the other part of the experiment: the radioactive particle. Remember, nothing happens to the cat until the observer pins down the location of the particle—"

"I believe I already mentioned that this is _not_ a good day for getting my head round the finer points of particle physics," Howell said irritably.

"Then just take my word for it. You'll be like an electron happily bouncing about your shell. You will occupy every one of your potential locations at once. If the Witch shows up in one of them, you can zip through your dimensional gateway and instantly be somewhere else. Should give the old girl a run for her money—for a while, at least."

"Calcifer, that's— Well, I'm in awe. I think you've done it!"

"It won't hold forever, of course."

"But it might give us time to think of a way around the curse."

"Exactly."

—o—

xxxvii.

They decided that four locations were plenty. Porthaven was a given: "No point in letting go of the shop if you don't have to," Calcifer pointed out, "and anyway, I'm stuck here."

Howell suggested Kingsbury. "I'll open a posh charm and spell boutique. _'Where all the swells go for spells.'_" By doing so he would also be making himself useful to the King, but nobody needed to know that.

Then he asked Calcifer to create for him a portal to Wales. He started to explain, but Calcifer stopped him. "It's an added safety feature if I don't know. Let's just say it's your private bolt hole, and nobody but you knows where you're going."

One location remained. "If I may—" said Calcifer.

"Go on."

"I recommend the uplands of central Ingary. There is a moor there that overlooks two valleys, the Chipping and the Folding."

"Inhabited?"

"Yes, one good-sized town and little villages and settlements all up and down both valleys. I will put up the illusion of a tall forbidding castle that— Ah! Here's an idea! I'll make it seem to move about mysteriously. _That_ should put paid to the day trippers and the rubberneckers."

"What's the town? Have I heard of it?"

"Probably. It's a mercantile center, appropriately enough called Market Chipping."

"That's it! That's the place!" And although there really was no reason for it—he knew not one soul in Market Chipping, after all—Howell felt hopeful again.

—o—o—o—o—o—

Notes on Part Four:

_And so began the final year of the short unhappy life of Howell Jenkins—_This section starts a couple of months into Michael's apprenticeship, which makes it roughly a year before the infamous Midsummer Day on which Howl's curse "collapses into reality." I tried to put events in sequence according to Howl's account in Chapter 17: _"Wizard Suliman started it (the garden at the edge of the Waste) a year ago... I think his notion was to make the Waste flower and abolish the Witch that way. He brought hot springs up to the surface and got it growing. He was doing very nicely until the Witch caught him... I came and had another go at the place a few months later. It seemed a good idea. That's how I came to meet the Witch. She objected to it."_

_You just didn't get the caliber of theater in the north of Ingary that you got in Kingsbury—_In HMC Chapter 8 Mrs. Fairfax tells Michael and Sophie, _"When Mr. Fairfax was alive, he used to like me to transport us both to Kingsbury to see a show from time to time. I can manage two very nicely if I take it slowly."_

_He had heard it exquisitely played, while a rich deep voice sang_—Two verses of the haunting Welsh folksong "Lisa Lân." If you'd like to hear this gorgeous melody, there are several versions on YouTube. In particular, an a capella version submitted by "Solstaro" will give you some idea of the wonderful tradition Howl believes can't take part in. (Does anybody besides me think that _"I was born an unmusical Welshman"_ is the saddest line in HMC?) My cobbled-together translation (which doesn't do it justice):

I loved you for so long;  
I delighted in your gentleness  
As we walked together in green groves,  
And your kisses were like honey.

When you walked beside me  
My crooked heart was healed.  
My soul sang like little birds.  
I feel a great longing for you, fair Lisa.

"_...My original country is the region of the summer stars."_—From the ancient _Hanes Taliesin, _or _The Book of Taliesin._ The translation from medieval Welsh is by Lady Charlotte Guest. DWJ may intend some magical/mystical link between Wales and Ingary which I have yet to fathom, though I am working on it... _"The region of the summer stars" _does bring to mind Calcifer, the Porthaven Marshes, and falling stars in August. You can find an extensive telling of the Taliesin story online at a site called ancienttexts dt org (this site has a narly html detector that I've tried everything I can think of to foil). Look in library-celtic-ctexts-taliesin, with slashes after dt org and between the other words.

_Mrs. Pentstemmon's Path_—One of those little goodies gleaned from the "sequels" to HMC, in this case _House of Many Ways._ Charmain considered the tone of the book to be "a trifle moralizing."

_The mountains that formed the barrier between Ingary and the Waste_—These are mentioned in HMC Chapter 21 as Sophie travels from the Mansion to the Waste in seven-league boots.

_A throbbing feminine voice, cursing the Witch_—By falling in love with him, the Witch has done the one thing that is guaranteed to drive Howl away, thus spoiling Lily's chance of collecting him for her planned jigsaw-puppet project. My guess is that Lily, deciding that if she wants it done right she'd better do it herself, leaves her hearth (effectively breaking her contract with the Witch) and converts herself (or an emanation of herself) into a good-looking schoolteacher who plays hard-to-get.

_One femtosecond before that curse hit your eardrums—_A femtosecond is one billionth of one millionth of one second. One femtosecond is to one second as one second is to 32 million years. This eentsy quantity is said to be useful in laser technology, and no doubt also comes in handy when working with quantum particles.

_The Cat in the Box_—In the Chrestomanci series, DWJ explores one implication of quantum theory, the possibility of "multiverses." In HMC, I believe that she touches on a further implication. A little background first:

A quantum, or subatomic, particle does not behave as does matter at the level of human sensory experience. It has no "location" per se; like Howl in his moving castle it occupies all its possible locations at once. Only when it is measured or observed can it be pinned down to one, at which time it is said to "collapse into reality," with the potential becoming the actual.

But what if the particle "really" collapses into all its potential locations at once? You then have multiple realities branching out from that single quantum event. In Chapter 8 of _Charmed Life, _Gwendolen explains the principle in her note to her "replacement": _"There are hundreds of other worlds only some are nicer than others, they are formed when there is a big event in History like a battle or an earthquake when the result can be two or more quite diferent things. Both those things hapen but they cannot exist together so the world splits into two worlds witch start to go diferent after that."_

A further strange implication of quantum theory is demonstrated by the famous "Schrödinger's Cat" thought experiment, developed by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger. (This is a thought experiment only; no actual cats were harmed.)

You get a cat, a box, a cyanide capsule, and a quantum particle, in this case a radioactive nucleus with a half-life of one minute. You add a Geiger counter attached to a trigger mechanism, which is in turn attached to a hammer. You put everything in the box and seal it. After one minute, the nucleus will either decay or it won't. If it decays, it makes a blip on the Geiger counter which activates the trigger and causes the hammer to fall, breaking the cyanide capsule and killing the cat. If it doesn't decay, then there is no blip on the counter and the cat is fine.

The puzzler is that, according to quantum theory, as long as the box is sealed the nucleus remains in BOTH of its potential states—decayed and not-decayed. Therefore the cat is both alive AND dead—until the observer opens the box, collapsing the cat's state of being into reality.

You don't need to know this to enjoy HMC, of course. But the way in which Howl and Calcifer speak of the Witch's curse "catching up" made me think at once of Schrödinger's unfortunate cat, killed by the observing of a quantum particle's collapse.

In a sense Howl's doom won't "collapse into reality" until Lily, acting as a sinister "observer," reads him the poem, thus delivering the curse. The moving castle allows him to elude the "observer" and thus avoid "collapsing" into the cursed state for as long as possible. At the end of the second verse of "Song," Howl goes very white when he realizes that Lily is about to collapse Sophie's reality too, and he hurries Sophie and Michael out of there before Lily can deliver the final verse.

"_William Norland's book (on bending space)"—Crucial Cantrips, _mentioned in Chapter Two of _House of Many Ways._


	5. Part Five

The usual warning: _Howl's Moving Castle _book ending spoilers.  
The grateful acknowledgment: Diana Wynne Jones, for creating these wonderful characters.  
And a special shout-out to Xanthe Z. Young, for giving this one a little nudge out the door.

Please note that the last section of Part Four, formerly chapterette xxxviii, has for chronology purposes been moved to Part Five and is now chapterette xlv.

I am starting to get fidgets from all these tiny little Roman numerals.

—o—o—o—

xxxviii.

The moving castle project kept them busy for weeks. Calcifer, of course, whinged unceasingly at the effort it was costing him to create each portal, and the space-bending and wormhole-constructing was like an unending parade of earthquakes, tornadoes, and heavy road-work right through your living-room. Afterwards the place was (if possible) a bigger mess than before. Herbs, tinctures, and powders had gone flying everywhere and got horribly mixed, creating stains and smells and eating holes in things. Shattered beakers, cruets, and retorts lay in glittering shards on the floor.

But when the spilled spells and the dust had settled, what wonder!

So elegant and advanced was Calcifer's work that all the levers, gears, and pulleys, so to speak, were hidden from view. To traverse hundreds of miles of warped space you need only turn a special knob, itself bespelled with coloured blobs of the all-purpose magical paint old Mab had sold Howell—surplus following a re-do of some invisible citadel or other.

Their actual location, Porthaven, was now one of the portals, marked by a blue blob. If all went as planned, opening the door red blob downward would take you directly to a fine street in Kingsbury, where Howell, on a location-scouting excursion, had discovered a disused stable to let. Its ornate facade, ever-so-slightly in need of a spruce-up, would serve as a chic storefront for the new magic boutique he planned to open in the capital city.

"All right, let's see how we did," Calcifer said. Michael, who had never in his life travelled farther than a mile or two outside Porthaven, was jittering with excitement.

"Well, Michael," Howell said. "Why don't you be first to give it a go?"

Tentatively Michael turned the knob and opened the door, then laughed with delight as the golden light of the city poured in. "Oh. My. Wow," he gasped.

"Exactly what I said when I saw Kingsbury for the first time," Howell said. "So. Our shop's on the Grand Esplanade East, just two streets over from the Montalbinese and High Norlandi Embassies. An excellent address. That glittering golden roof over there is the Chamber of Councillors. Shall we—?"

Howell and Michael ventured out among the towers and domes of Kingsbury, leaving Calcifer to close the door behind them. "You're very welcome," he muttered.

"It's warm," Michael said, rapturously taking it all in. "It's got flowers."

"Yes, we're a long way south here, and the weather is lovely pretty much year-round," Howell said. "And there are theatres and shops and the best restaurants anywhere. One bistro I especially like is not far from here. Why don't we grab ourselves some nosh? After the seaweed, I think I owe you."

"Can we?" Michael said. "I mean, we _can,_ can't we! Howl, this is awesome. What's nosh?"

—o—

xxxix.

Howell had been especially eager for the third portal, bespelled with a blob of green, to be ready. Through it you stepped out on to the wind-swept moors of central Ingary. There the castle would be ambulatory, moving about as restlessly as the local weather, which was highly suitable for those spells of Heathcliff-y desperation he seemed to be having so many of lately. And when the histrionics grew dull (which they invariably did), there was plenty to explore and discover in the nearby valleys—and in the town, Market Chipping.

When Michael tried this doorway for the first time, it made him uneasy. Central Ingary was land-locked. Michael was used to the unceasing background music of gulls and pounding surf, and the odd stillness frightened him at first. But he soon got used to it and grew to like the clouds scudding over the heather and that odd sensation the moors gave you that you were standing on the roof of the world.

Howell was now near the place in which he had found himself on that enchanted Christmas night so long ago, when the jolly skating-party called out a welcome to Market Chipping and invited him into their game. He hoped to find that pond again, if only to assure himself it was as real as the rest of Ingary had proven to be, and to learn, if he could, whatever meaning his visit that night had had. If there was any destiny or purpose to his life (he didn't think he believed in such things, but you never knew), he sensed he would find it there.

—o—

xl.

"And where does that one go?" Michael asked about the fourth and final portal, the black one.

"It's for conducting some personal business I'd rather not discuss just now."

"Fine, Howl," Michael said, stolidly incurious. "Whatever you say."

By Howell's request this portal had got done just in time for Christmas. He had never missed a Christmas Eve in Wales, no matter how complicated or difficult the transport; this one evening of home, family, and tradition was vitally important to him.

It was always the same: Megan looking harried from cooking and shopping and the general bustle of the season, Gareth gone a bit slurry from drinking too much, Neil's eyes alight with acquisitiveness and greed, Mari with Christmas fairy-dust all over her sweet face. They all went together to the church service at 7.15, then they came home and sat down to a nice supper.

It was the one occasion upon which Megan and Gareth tolerated his presence remarkably well. Maybe the commemoration of the birth of the Saviour had its due effect, shaming them into a pious, if rather forced (and of course short-lived) politeness. But Howell suspected it really was down to the extravagant gifts he brought Neil and Mari, which set Gareth to beaming like a beetle-browed Father Christmas (since it was all money that _he _hadn't had to drop on them). Once or twice, Howell thought, he had even caught Megan almost smiling, though she always clucked and muttered about _spoiling those kids rotten._

The transport was painless, the weather in Wales, not so much: raw and sleety, with a sharp wind off the sea. He got to Rivendell at a quarter to seven, only to find Megan locking the front door behind her and hurrying down the garden path to join Gareth and the children in Gareth's piled-high-with-parcels Datsun Cherry.

"Oh," Megan said tightly. "Howell. I thought I told you. You've forgot, as usual. We're going to Gareth's brother's in Anglesey this year."

Mari was leaning out the rear window. "Come with us, Uncle Howell!" she cried.

In a low, seething tone, Megan said, "Hush, Mari! Howell's not invited."

"I see," Howell said.

Without another word Megan bundled into the car, slamming the door in such haste that a large swath of her coat was left dragging in the wet. Gareth backed nervously out of the drive, then sped off.

Howell could see Mari's little face pressed against the window, gazing back at him. He stood shivering on the doorstep, watching until long after they had gone. Then he unlocked the front door and went inside. He looked about the cold darkened rooms. He set his gifts beneath the lightless tree.

"Well. Happy Christmas then," he said.

He let himself out. With his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched against the wet and cold, he set out walking. He walked down the long, long hill and through the town, past trees and houses twinkling with fairy lights. He caught glimpses of people all snug in their homes, singing carols, tucking in to supper. He went on walking until he reached the seashore.

As it always did, the sea calmed him, absorbing, at least for a little while, his loneliness.

—o—

xli.

Back in Ingary, they celebrated Christmas morning with new clothes for Michael, a Christmas-pudding, and a monstrous mound of eggs and bacon. Calcifer grumbled at being made to cook, "particularly on _this_ day," but after Howell conjured a bundle of delightful cedarwood from Michael's former landlord (who had never paid Howell for a spell that he, unlike most of the people of the district, could well afford), Calcifer forgave him everything.

—o—

xlii.

And so, onward to the new year.

It began well enough. Calcifer's revolving doors seemed to be working as planned. So far there had been no sign of the Witch of the Waste, not even the merest tingle or premonition.

Howell gave himself at least _some_ of the credit for that. True, he had fallen easily enough into her trap that day in the Waste, but at least he'd kept enough wits about him to give her a phony name. And a good one, too. Let the Witch search high and low for Mr. "Legolas Greenleaf!" Outside the pages of Tolkien's book she was never, ever going to find him.

Still, there was no harm in taking extra precautions. Howell, Michael, and Calcifer conferred and plotted, and at length Michael got his assignment: to find the biggest gossip mill in Market Chipping and spread the maddest, most lurid stories he could think up about the horrible creature in the castle on the hill.

For such a nice boy, Michael carried it off brilliantly. There was a grand bakery in the town called Cesari's, where tradesmen and travellers and farmers in from the country liked to gather to hear the news, exchange stories, and flirt with the young apprentices. Once he had inveigled himself into that crowd, Michael proved to have a real gift for telling bald-faced lies.

Or, as Howell preferred to think of them, "tall tales" artfully embellished with "folkloric motifs."

He and Calcifer roared with laughter as Michael described the locals' eye-popping, jaw-dropping credulity. It was all too easy, really.

"What a wicked imagination you've got, Michael!" Howell said. "Surely you didn't get any of those ideas from _my_ books."

"Only the one about the Ogre With No Heart. And Bluebeard, but they already knew about him. Those worked wonders. Trust me, Howl: the townspeople are thoroughly warned off. And no girl who values her heart or her soul is going to come anywhere near this castle."

Howell's face must have fallen at this last statement, because Michael added, "Well, that's what you wanted, isn't it?"

—o—

xliii.

"_And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind how time has ticked a heaven round the stars."_

With strands of Dylan (as in Thomas, one poet whose name he had no trouble in remembering, thank you very much) running through his mind, Howell made a gloomy celebration of his twenty-seventh birthday with a four-hour walk through the hills.

He didn't much care for birthdays, unless they were someone else's. His own came round dolefully each year on 2 February, one of those dates, like All Hallow's Eve, that to the ancients marked a node of significance, a transitional cusp during which the veil between the worlds grew permeable, allowing things to creep through that should have stayed on their own side.

The Celts had called it Imbolc or Gŵyl Fair, the feast of oncoming spring, and they commemorated it with bonfires and rituals of healing and purification. The churchmen named it variously Candlemas, the Day of the Presentation, or the Day of the Purification, further deepening its old association with redemption and growing light.

But as it always did, the weather knew better. Second February was also, by tradition, a day of weather prognostication, and the outlook wasn't good. Briskly though he walked, Howell grew chilled right through his hollow chest and down to the toes of his boots. The heath was forlorn. The steep grey sky, cheerless and cold, promised more of the same forever. Clouds were stacked upon clouds, with still more clouds beyond. You could easily forget that one day the sun would shine again. You could even forget that the sun had ever existed.

_Always winter and never Christmas._ Always February and never May.

Always once upon a time, never happily ever after.

—o—

xliv.

"I'm stopping the castle," Calcifer said one rainy evening later that month.

"Whatever for?" said Howell, who was in the midst of a complicated flea-abatement charm for a noble client in Kingsbury who bred hunting dogs.

"We've got a visitor."

"Up here?" Michael said. "On a night like this?" Michael was attempting a charm of his own, this one to clean barnacles from the hulls of wooden boats. He'd worked remorselessly at it for days, but he was having no luck with the shipwreck flotsam he'd collected to practise on. The barnacles had disappeared—that part was working just fine—but so had the bits of hull beneath them.

"So. What sort of visitor?" Howell said. "Vegetable, animal, mineral—?"

"Human," Calcifer said.

"I've always wondered how you can tell," Michael said.

"If it's flesh and blood, I can smell it," Calcifer said.

"Fee, fi, fo, fum," Howell added.

"Oh, right," Michael said, rolling his eyes.

Calcifer was prescient, as always: moments later there was a sharp, imperious knocking.

"Erm, Howl," Michael said. "I answered the door the last fifty times. Your turn. Please?"

"Perfectly safe," Calcifer said, as Howell, with a heavy sigh, turned the knob green-down and threw open the door.

A tall man, drenched head to foot, stood there. Howell could see just how badly they were missing Ben Sullivan at Court; the Prince Justin's disguise spell was so flimsy it would have been laughed out of Neil's primary school on Halloween. "Wizard Howl?"

"That's right," Howell said guardedly.

"Have you got him?"

"What? Whom?"

"Suliman."

"Good lord, no. I wish I did."

"Hell's bloody _bells,"_ said the Prince. "I swear this thing said you did."

"What thing? Here, come inside."

By firelight the man looked like a bad drawing of a soaking wet brown bear. _"This _thing. Here—"

From somewhere inside his shaggy coat Justin drew forth a badly rumpled wire structure about the size of his hand. Tangled inside was a white cotton handkerchief with the monogram "B G E S" embroidered in brown and copper thread.

Howell took the spell. The handkerchief was Ben's, all right. The spell framework was mere amateurish third-rate rubbish. And yet it _was_ attempting to do what it had been made to do, which was to find Benjamin Sullivan.

The trouble was, Ben wasn't there. There was only the guitar, standing off in its corner by the door, growing daily more inert and silent. It would have been _most_ helpful if Justin's spell and handkerchief had stirred something in it, maybe even awakened a resounding chord....

But nothing happened. Howell wondered if he should mention any of this to Justin. He decided not to. As a divining device the guitar would have been no value to the Prince, who was known not to be a magic user. Later, if he wanted it as a keepsake of his friend, Howell would gladly give it to him. But for now—

"Suliman's not here," Howell said, returning the things to Justin. "I'm sorry."

"Bad spell, then," Justin said. "Piece of junk. Damn it all. Well, sorry to bother. Good night."

He bowed curtly, turned, and went off into the dark and wet, shaking his head and muttering, "Damn it all. _Damn."_

After that, for the next fortnight or so, the Prince kept popping up at the moving castle, each time sporting a different disguise spell. For some reason Justin seemed to be enjoying the game, so Howell played along, pretending not to recognise him. The spells _did _get better with time; maybe Annabel Fairfax, who was said to reside up the Folding Valley, was helping Justin out. In any event, he might show up as a stocky Norlandi highlander in lederhosen, or an Inglish grenadier in green livery. Once he came as an unctuous Montalbinese sommelier who offered Howell a case of some not half-bad stuff resembling Chianti in exchange for yet another finding-spell.

Whenever that imperious hop-to-it knock came at the green door, Howell made sure to jump up and handle the transaction himself. Justin was making a futile circuit between the castle and the Folding Valley, which was just as Howell intended. Whatever happened, the Prince must never get hold of an accurate spell that sent him heading off toward the Waste, where he'd very soon come to a sticky end.

"That's really strange," Michael remarked one morning, after the spangled Rajpuhti belly-dancer had departed with yet another of Howell's masterful duds. "All these different people buying the same kind of spell in such a short time. Do you think it means anything, Howl?"

"That's how the business cycle generally works," Howell explained, but truth to tell he could think of a great many things it might mean—all of them ominous.

—o—

xlv.

Market Chipping was bigger and more bustling than Howell expected. It was in fact a town of some importance, with roads from everywhere in Ingary coming together at its very grand Market Square. He had to do quite a bit of asking around before he got hold of a native, who told him that what he was looking for was called Broad Pond and that it lay out northeast in a very quiet old neighbourhood, and who then rattled off a series of complicated and confusing directions which if Howell ever hoped to find the place he was going to need seeing as how Market Chipping was so ancient that nobody had planned the streets, they just happened. "You can't miss it," the townsman added, wishing Howell well and hurrying off.

It was a moody morning early in March. Making his way through the cobblestone maze, Howell found himself caught behind a funeral procession. As it seemed to be going in the direction he was going, he followed at a respectful distance. A brief grey rain-shower passed over, the heavens weeping for the one who lay in the somber black carriage far ahead. Idly Howell wondered who had died, and whether they had lived to a peaceful old age or had been taken too soon, and how many grieving hearts were left behind.

"_Under the new made clouds, and happy as the heart was long, in the sun born over and over, I ran my heedless ways."_ Dylan again, evoking so poignantly the timeless halls of childhood when you were yet innocent of mortality, before you knew your first tragedy, your first great loss. For Howell it had been losing Mam, after which nothing was ever the same.

He hoped it wouldn't be so horrible for the black-clad mourners, whoever they were, who rode silently up ahead, shock-numbed, raw and newborn in their bereavement.

It was going to be, though. There was no getting round grief; you could only go through it.

Slowly and sadly the funeral moved on, always in the direction of the green hills beyond the edge of town. And as he had somehow known it would, it passed within sight of the pond. There Howell remained, watching until the last black-wreathed coach was gone from sight. Then he turned toward the place he had so eagerly sought, and in a few quick strides he was there.

The ice and snow of sixteen Christmases had come and gone, and daffodils now grew along the verge, yet everything was just as he remembered it. The thatched stone cottages in the nearby streets had seemed so cosy that night, firelit, lamplit, decked with wreaths and red-ribboned garlands. Today their diamond-paned casements stood open, and lace curtains stirred in the spring air over window-boxes brimful of crocus, hyacinth, and narcissus: pink, purple, and white.

The rain had gone off over the mountains. The water was still, mirroring blue sky and bright fair-weather clouds. Once he had got his bearings Howell realised he was standing opposite the place where he had emerged from Wales into Ingary on that long-ago night. He could just make it out along the far bank, a wild corner covered by a thick stand of evergreens that grew down almost to the water's edge: the incursion of some ancient forest into this long-domesticated corner of Ingary.

It was very quiet. Standing there, watching the cloud-shadows move across the pond's serene unruffled surface, he felt closer to Mam's spirit than he had in years. He could imagine a time when love and contentment would surround him once again.

He could even believe that one day his heart would find rest.

—o—

xlvi.

It was still March, still moody, the sky all in grey and mauve, when Howell paid his first visit to the village of Upper Folding. It had occurred to him that it might be a good idea to keep an eye on Justin's comings and goings. There were any number of hedge-witches and wizards of doubtful reputation out there who might be pushing spells that were at best worthless, at worst highly dangerous. And who knew? Shady characters of that sort might be in the pay of even shadier one.

Howell's plan was to call on Annabel Fairfax, the local white witch and another of Mrs. Pentstemmon's distinguished alumni. He recalled meeting Mrs. Fairfax once before; however, as on that occasion she had been talking dear old Mrs. P.'s ears off, Howell very much doubted that Mrs. F. would have any recollection of meeting _him. _But she might know something about Justin.

The village common was agreeably bucolic, with doves cooing and sheep baa-ing and flowers puffing pollen everywhere. Mrs. Fairfax's home was appropriately thatched and rose-hung, her garden and orchard already spectacular. When the door opened, Howell was expecting a garrulous but good-natured matron, somewhat stout, approaching middle age.

Instead—instead—

Instead—

Whoever she was, she was _not _Annabel Fairfax. No. He had never seen this young lady before, or anyone like her. Her hair was in glistening curls so dark they were almost black. Her enormous blue eyes shone with passion and intelligence. She was bathed in an aura of wild native magic that crackled and sparkled and danced. And she was wearing a rose-coloured frock that, with a magic all its own, glorified every heart-stopping curve.

"Well, don't stand like a statue there," she said. "I'm Mrs. Fairfax's apprentice. Who are you? What do you want?"

He had not intended to blurt out an alias, because this time, he knew, it was True Love. How could it be anything else? Surely this was female perfection. But the mere sight of her had got him so flummoxed he couldn't remember his own name. "My name is Oak—Sylvester Oak," he stammered. "I—you—will you—?"

"Certainly not!" she cried, putting the door between herself and him. "Annabel, come here—now, please—there's a man at the door—"

"Yes, my dear? The scones are ready, and so is the new batch of spells—as I may have already told you, the clover was particularly fine this year, and the honey is so heavenly that—" Mrs. Fairfax bustled in, quite floury, wiping her hands with her apron. "Oh. My goodness. Can it—? No, surely not. Well, sir. What can we do for you?"

He must have had quite a lengthy conversation with Mrs. F. (there being no possibility of any other kind). He must have explained that he was following the Prince. He must have asked for the name of her angel apprentice, begged permission to return and throw himself at her feet, pleaded for the gods only knew what else—

And Mrs. Fairfax must have agreed to all of it. Because the next day, and the day after that, and every day for the next several weeks, he was back at Upper Folding, paying court to Miss Lettie Hatter with every charm at his command.

—o—

xlvii.

They walked among the cherry blossoms and made the sort of small-talk that well-brought-up young Inglish persons could go on with for hours. Lettie was magically gifted. Lettie had exquisite manners. Lettie had had a brilliant education.

But when he was not in her presence, Howell began remembering all that she had somehow managed to convey, wordlessly but with stark clarity: that she did not want Howell, nor did she even like him, much less love him; that she found him pompous, insincere, and boring; that she saw right through to the plain, unattractive man beneath his tarted-up hair and ridiculous clothes; that she was seeing him every day only because Mrs. Fairfax insisted that Mr. Oak was reputed to be an excellent spellcaster from whom Lettie could learn a great deal but that, if the truth were told, every time he showed up Lettie wished she could transport herself—or, better yet, _him_—to some dead star a trillion miles away.

In the meantime, March gave way to April. Cherry blossoms gave way to apple blossoms. The moors were now at their most mottled and dramatic, and Howell was channeling Heathcliff full bore. His love for Lettie was a celestial radiance. It was a Stygian darkness. It was ecstasy and pain, joy and grief, solace and agony. It was obsessive. It was time-consuming. It was addictive.

So preoccupied did Howell become with winning that cold, opinionated little heart that he quite forgot to pay attention to Justin.

—o—

xlviii.

"You were right about that business-cycle thing, Howl," Michael said. "Those people have stopped coming by for finding-spells, didn't you notice?"

He hadn't, actually. It was now the middle of April, with a spring storm howling over Porthaven. Whenever the wind turned northeasterly it sent rain down the chimney in sheets, driving Calcifer nearly hysterical. Howell was dimly aware of Michael's frantic efforts to keep the fire demon burning. But mostly Howell was a million miles away, obsessing about _her._

Lettie, Lettie, Lettie. So beautiful. So very, very beautiful. So passionate, so brilliant, so—

And, _yet._

There was something unbearable about Lettie's radiance, something intolerable about her forcefulness. He sensed no joy in her, no softness. She was ambitious. She was ruthless. She was....

He hated admitting it, even though it was only to himself: she was heartless. She was like a young Witch of the Waste. Yes. Just let her near a falling star, and it would all be over for Lettie Hatter.

The thought chilled him.

Then he remembered that Lettie was so intensely vain (thank the gods) that she'd probably die before she'd go slogging through a marsh after dark.

_Please, let that be so._

But whether or no, he knew it now: he loved Lettie no more than she loved him. At first he had been so sure that he was well and truly in love. Her beauty made his soul ache. Yet she had reeled him in, let him fall in love with her, then brutally rejected him. She'd beat him at his own game, and it was bloody awful.

In fact, it hurt like hell.

But in the end it changed nothing. Lettie remained the most beautiful young lady ever to walk the earth, while Howell remained—

"This is really annoying," Michael said.

"You're telling me," Calcifer said.

Slowly emerging from Lettie's spell, Howell realised they were talking about _him._

"Is everything all right?" he said, feeling groggy as a sleepwalker.

"The world ended last Tuesday," Calcifer said. "Fiery cataclysm, quite spectacular. Other than that, it's been deadly dull around here."

"And there's nothing to eat again," Michael said irritably. "I'm going down to Market Chipping."

"What's got in to him?" Howell said as Michael slammed the castle door behind him.

"No idea," said Calcifer. "Maybe he thinks you've been ignoring him. And me. And business. And the fate of the nation, while you're off mooning over some girl—"

Howell rubbed his neck, which felt crinked as though he'd been sleeping on it the wrong way for weeks. "Calcifer, I've had things on my mind. Not just Lettie. The Witch, too. I think she's got Justin. I did everything I could to prevent that. Everything."

"_Everything?_ Where were you when your earnest but dim apprentice, left alone and unsupervised for the nineteenth day in a row, finally succeeded in created a working spell, which he promptly sold to a man in green who came knocking on the Castle door?"

"What?" Howell cried. "When did this happen?"

Calcifer gave a shrug of mighty indifference. "A week, two weeks ago, I don't know."

"And you never saw fit to tell me?"

"You never saw fit to ask me."

"Calcifer, you work for me, not the other way round. Remember?"

Calcifer blazed up the chimney, growling something about the arrogance of _upstart know-nothing biochemical life-forms._

"I heard that!" Howell said.

"I meant you to. Now, look. While you've been off skirt-chasing, the Witch has gone and nabbed Justin. Which has weakened the King's position even further. It's been jolly good for hers, though."

Howell couldn't fight it any longer. It was true. He'd made bollocks of everything. "I know," he said angrily.

"She's going to find you," Calcifer said sternly. "She'll figure out this moving castle soon enough. You know she will."

"Yes, well, she's coming for you too, Blueface."

"Of course she is. And if we don't get this contract broken, we're going to become just like _them. _Only knowing you," Calcifer added, "you'll keep your good looks and I'll be the one who ends up haggard, hideous, and hollow, like some idiotic 'Portrait of Dorian Jenkins.' Well, no thanks."

—o—

xlix.

In between daily helpings of hatefulness from Lettie, Howell kept busy getting the Kingsbury magic shop up and running. Custom was brisk. The nobility were a superstitious lot, and his trade in amulets and talismans was through the roof. Added to that, the King's people had approached him for bids on spells that had an unpleasantly war-like air about them. Howell was already brought face-to-face daily with his own cowardice; it would be the final straw if this fairy-tale kingdom got caught up in the conflict that Strangia and High Norland were fomenting.

Of course, all this busy-ness _did _provide an excellent excuse for his not getting round to calling on Mrs. Pentstemmon. He could only hope she hadn't noticed his presence in the city. He was going by the name Pendragon here, after all, and.....

Oh, right. Just whom did he think he was fooling? There was _nothing_ that Mrs. Pentstemmon didn't notice.

—o—

l.

And, on the first of May, Michael's birthday came round again. He was fifteen, and quite pleased about it. As was Howell. He might spend his _own_ birthdays in a wallow of self-reproach, but there was no reason why Michael shouldn't have a ripping good time.

True, the kid _had_ sent Justin off to his death, or so it appeared. But the blame for that fell squarely on Howell. _Thank you, Lettie Hatter, for wasting so much of my time!_

Ben gone, Justin gone—it was all too much. Howell's intuition and magic sense kept telling him that somehow they were still _out there,_ but he could not quite bring himself to believe it, precisely because he wanted so desperately for it to be true. This was Ingary, after all. Anything might manifest. And Lettie had put him so badly off his game that he was beginning to doubt and distrust everything about the place.

One thing was certain, though: it was indubitably and incontrovertibly May Day. _The_ day for getting dressed to the teeth and parading around in hopes of meeting girls. Should Howell actually succeed in meeting one, and—an even bigger _if_—impressing her as well, it would go a long way toward healing his shaken self-confidence and battered pride. Who knew? With a new lady on his arm he even might get up the courage for a satisfyingly messy break-up with Lettie.

Michael chose to celebrate the day in Market Chipping. A good choice, Howell thought; plenty of shopping, and plenty of girls. Calcifer brought them right down to the edge of town, where he then proceeded to salute Michael with some really impressive bangs and booms. Michael loved it.

The first order of business was birthday-presents. Too bad this wasn't Wales, for Howell would have seen to it that Michael got everything a boy his age ought to have: a Nintendo ES with turbo-charged joysticks, fully-loaded (_Zelda, Tetris, Metalstorm_—the essentials). A Walkman—stereophonic, of course—with a lifetime supply of batteries. A tape library stocked with Beatles, Stones, Police, a bit of disco, a great deal of Elvis, and every car song ever written. And video-cassettes! If only there had been electricity, Michael would have gone home that afternoon with _Raiders of the Lost Ark, _all three _Star Wars_, arm-loads of _Star Trek,_ and much, much more.

Instead, Howell took him shopping for magic books and new clothes and boots. After that they had a fancy lunch at a new place in Market Square by the fountain of the King's great-grandfather.

When they emerged at just past two o'clock, the square was teeming. Howell gave Michael an extra handful of coins and said, "Go buy yourself some treats. Save enough for a birthday-cake from Cesari's over there. We'll meet back here at five. If I'm detained and don't make it, give Calcifer a wave and he'll transport you up to the castle."

Michael was in such a good mood he didn't even roll his eyes at the prospect of Howell being "detained." Joyfully he dived into the crowd and was gone.

Howell wandered out among the throng. He felt safe here, lost in festival-day anonymity. For a long time he was content just to mingle and watch—all the while reassuring himself that his blue-and-silver suit was so much grander than anything anybody else was wearing. This provincial town was hardly the capital, after all. And just in case he met that special girl, the anti-Lettie, he wanted to her to like what she saw.

The square got more colourful and crowded as the afternoon wore on. Farm-boys and apprentices were swaggering it in finery they had either rented or got out of moth-balls for the day. Shop-girls and country lasses, all with garlands and ribbons in their hair, wore bright swirling skirts and tightly-laced fairy-tale bodices that pushed up their breasts. They glowed and giggled and flirted every bit as outrageously as the fellows. None of the girls was a patch on Lettie, but Howell could so easily have chosen one, then charmed and courted and wooed her with everything at his command. He had been so very good at it, once....

No. He was tired of that game. Probably cured for life, if the truth were told. Good old Lettie. Though _she_ didn't want him, she had spoiled him for anyone else.

_Thanks ever so, Lettie._

By late afternoon things were boozy and raucous all round. The merry Market Chippingites were _really _getting their May Day on. It was just like the song:

"_It's time to do a wretched thing or two,  
And try to make each precious day one you'll always rue!"_

There was going to be plenty of ruing, all right, if all the kissing and groping and groaning that was going on all around him led to their inevitable conclusion. All the same, Howell felt happy for the May Day lovers. Truly happy. He felt even happier at not being among their number. How odd. Did this mean, then, that at the lofty age of twenty-seven he had achieved _growth?_ And _maturity?_

Not bloody likely.

_Come on, Michael,_ he thought. _Let's go home. I'm tired of this. What's taking you so long?_

He set off toward Cesari's, jostling shoulder-to-shoulder with drunks and rowdies. It struck him as ridiculous now, all this dressing up and prancing about. A silly animal mating dance, nothing more. Distasteful, really.

He saw her then.

In all that sea of colourful plumage she was the only spot of grey. She seemed to be feeling her way along the perimeter of the square, mole-like, blind and terrified. Was some lout bothering her? Or a gang of them? In this May Day anarchy, what was there to stop anyone who decided not to play by the rules? The village police were as sodden as the rest.

Well, he was neither loutish nor (at the moment) drunk. He knew he cut a courtly dash. He did not think he was particularly frightening. He would offer her a smile and a bow and a safe escort to wherever she was going. She could not possibly mistake his chivalrous intent.

Or so he thought, as he crossed the square in long strides.

She had seen him. He terrified her. Not at all what he intended! She shrank into the nearest doorway, cowering, holding her shawl up over her face as if to—what? Vanish? She did not _seem _to be a magic user. But it felt to him as though she was trying to do _something_—transport away, or go invisible, or shrink herself into a mouse and skitter off. For some reason it wasn't working. She couldn't escape.

"It's all right, you little grey mouse," he said, trying to sound lighthearted. "I only want to buy you a drink."

Oh, _hell._ That last was more than a bit come-hitherish, when all he really meant by it was a restorative cup of tea or glass of sherry—

_You're thinking too much,_ he reprimanded himself. _Just say something brave, dashing, reassuring...._

What came out was, "Don't look so scared."

Thank the gods, before he could utter another inanity the girl found her voice. "Oh, no thank you, if you please, sir," she stammered. But—and this made his absent heart leap with hope—she was no longer hiding her face or turning away from him. She was taking him in: his hair, his looks, his fine blue and silver suit, all enhanced with a nice clean floral scent.

He hoped it pleased her. Because he was taking her in too, and what he saw pleased him very much: vivid blue-green eyes in a face that, though set in a mild frown of perpetual unhappiness, had lovely bones. Her hair, drawn back in a loose knot, was the most amazing colour, a bright reddish-gold like a new penny. Her figure—what he could see of it—was even more divine than Lettie Hatter's. But unlike Lettie this lovely girl seemed unaware of her strong femininity, her utterly natural beauty.

That she was taking orders from someone in a shop—this was plain from the demure high-necked grey dress she wore—seemed a terrible waste.

"I—I'm on my way to see my sister," she said, still trembling.

He could tell that this visit to her sister was extremely important to her, and that it would be churlish of him to detain her any longer. And yet—

"Then by all means do so," he said. "Who am I to keep a pretty lady from her sister?"

And yet he wished he could help her, because it was plain that something in her life had gone terribly wrong. She seemed maimed in spirit, drained of youth and joy, bereft of hope for the future. He understood. Completely.

But he was a stranger. He supposed that at a time like this a young woman needed her sister. All right, then. But this sister had better be welcoming and comforting to her, not shutting her out as Megan had done to him after Mam died.

"Would you like me to go with you," he offered, "since you seem so scared?"

"No. No thank you, sir!" she said, almost with a sob. And before he could reply she had propelled herself past him and was gone.

So shattering was his disappointment that he quickly blanketed it with wrath—toward himself. Well, well. And wasn't that brilliantly done of him? Great effing gods! For all his well-rehearsed and magically augmented charm, not to mention his prodigious intelligence, he had not only frightened the girl off, he had also failed—epically, titanically, spectacularly—even to learn her name.

—o—o—o—o—o—

NOTES on Part Five:

"_And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind how time has ticked a heaven round the stars." —_ From "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower" by Dylan Thomas, who captures moods I can well imagine Howl having. The poem is about helplessness and death. But not to worry; things will soon look brighter for our hero.

_His birthday came round dolefully each year on 2 February —_ Several readers, on Sophie-Lou's fine website _Shooting Stars_ and elsewhere, have had a go at calculating Howl's birth date, with results ranging from 27 January to 4 February. I believe there's a good case for 2 February.

Here's my reasoning. (Skip this part if you're not into such minutiae.)

1. The main action of _Howl's Moving Castle _occurs between May Day and Midsummer Day, both of which are also "nodes of significance," as described in xliii, on ancient and modern calendars. May Day is pretty well fixed at 1 May, but Midsummer Day, in our world at least, can fall anywhere from 20 to 25 June, depending on who's doing the celebrating and whether they take into account the actual date and time of the summer solstice. By tradition, however, the default date seems to be 21 June. So let's assume that in Ingary Midsummer Day falls on 21 June.

2. To calculate backwards from 21 June we need to know what year we're starting from, because leap-years throw an extra day in here and there. We aren't told what year it is in Ingary, or even how the years are numbered. For that matter, we aren't told what year it is in Wales either; that's left up to the reader. For myself, I like the assumption Sophie-Lou makes at _Shooting Stars,_ that the book's publication date, 1986, is the year in which _Howl's Moving Castle _is set. (I was around then, and remember how things like clothes and computer games looked.)

3. Twenty-first June, 1986, minus "ten thousand days and nights" is—what? Unlike Howl, I can't do this sort of thing in my head, so to back up my guesses I used a website, timeanddate dt cm, than has a duration-between-two-dates calculator-thingy. Here's what I got:

"_From and including: __**Monday, February 2, 1959**_

_To, but not including : __**Saturday, June 21, 1986**_

_It is __**10,001**__ days from the start date to the end date, but not including the end date;_

_Or __**27 years, 4 months, 19 days **__excluding the end date."_

Which is close enough to satisfy me, at any rate; Howl said the curse brought it to "about" ten thousand days, and the Rugby Club reunion adds a bit of alcohol-induced fog and imprecision to the proceedings.

4. Symbolically, the date seems resonant with the themes of the story, as I see them. At least on first reading I believe that we are meant to worry, along with Mrs. Pentstemmon, that Howl really _is_ going to the bad. There's much that's ambivalent about his attitudes and his behavior, even to himself. Second February marks the point halfway between the winter solstice (around 21 December), and the spring equinox (around 21 March). Six weeks of winter remain; are things going to get better or worse? Only the groundhog (or badger, in other parts of the world) knows for sure.

The ancient Celts, insofar as we know or have been able to reconstruct, divided the year into a dark half, beginning 1 November, and a light half, beginning 1 May. Second February is likewise the halfway point between these two dates. Had Howl met the Witch six months before on 1 November, as the year was going in to its dark half? He meets Sophie on 1 May, just at the beginning of the light half. On 21 June, the day of longest light, Sophie breaks the contract and ends the curse.

There's much more I could go into about these dates and seasons (Michael's birthday falls on 1 May, for example; when is Sophie's?), but I'll have to do that elsewhere. They do help in providing a framework for the chronology of events in and around HMC, which even after reading and/or listening to the book at least a dozen times and studying other readers' chronologies (props to Wikipedia and to Sophie-Lou, once again), I still find a bit confusing.

_Always winter...never Christmas — _That state of spiritual stagnation so well described in _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, _a book that Howl owns. OT, it also sums up the climate in my home state of Nebraska from New Year's through March and sometimes well into April.

"_Under the new made clouds" — _From "Fern Hill," again by Dylan Thomas. As a fellow Welshman (Thomas was born in Swansea), Howl thinks of him as Dylan.

_A white cotton handkerchief with a brown monogram: "B G E S."_ — I didn't think the initials "B S" quite did Ben justice, so I gave him some middle names.

_She was like a young Witch of the Waste —_ In Chapter 8, it appears that Mrs. Fairfax has also noticed this tendency in Lettie: "Lettie's brains go way beyond mine, and she could end up in the same league as the Witch of the Waste—only in a _good_ way." Likewise Mrs. Pentstemmon, in Chapter 12: "It seems as if those of high ability cannot resist some extra, dangerous stroke of cleverness, which...begins a slow decline to evil."

_A fully-loaded Nintendo ES — _Hey, it's 1986!

"_It's time to do a wretched thing or two...."_ — "The Lusty Month of May," from Lerner and Loewe's musical _Camelot _(1960)_._


	6. Part Six

Acknowledgment: The wondrous Diana Wynne Jones, for giving us _Howl's Moving Castle _and its sequels. Now that the story has arrived at events covered in the book, you will recognize some of the dialogue.  
Warnings: Angst. The contract. Welsh goddesses.

—o—o—o—

li.

Ever since May Day—exactly a week, now—Michael had been behaving oddly—if by _odd_ you meant floating a foot and a half off the ground, singing nonstop, fussing and chirping incessantly like a bird in nest-building season...

Bah! Bother May Day, anyway! What a fraud! What a ridiculous, pointless charade! It mocked all reason that a fresh-faced boy like Michael could pop down to Market Chipping and find himself a sweetheart _just like that, _while Howell—Howell the courtly, Howell the well-educated, Howell the professional man—sent them running off in terror!

It was Friday afternoon, and Michael had just floated off down the hill, whistling. Calcifer was sleeping fitfully beneath the embers. Howell sat brooding by the hearth until he could stand it no longer, got up and mooched about the castle looking for things and not finding them until he could stand _that_ no longer, then sat and brooded some more. He could not stop thinking about Market Square and May Day and the little grey mouse. He could not stop thinking about her vivid copper hair and her blue-green eyes: red-rimmed with fatigue, and yet so wild and magical. She was a riddle, a conundrum, her porcelain skin finer even than the Queen's—yet she wore the dull, workaday clothing of a shop-girl.

He kept turning the encounter over and over in his mind. He searched his soul for anything he had said or done that might have seemed brutish or frightening to her. He could find nothing.

And yet the girl was _terrified._

Could it be that that terror had come from within herself, and not from him at all—that she had difficulties of her own? If so, there might be some hope that his soul was not such a charred, ruined thing after all. But how could he know? With his heart no longer in him, it was so hard to be sure of anything.

He knew what he ought to do, of course: walk through the Kingsbury door and go straight to Mrs. Pentstemmon, then throw himself at that great lady's feet and tell her all of it: Mam, Tad, Megan, rugby, Wales, Ingary, the Porthaven Marshes, his rash and dangerous contract with Calcifer, the Witch, the King, his grim suspicions about Justin and Ben, his baffling encounter with the young lady in Market Square...

But he couldn't do it. He couldn't. Before his old teacher he was soul-naked. Utterly though she loved him, Mrs. P. saw Howell with a clarity that pierced like knives.

She would reproach him, sternly yet lovingly, for his folly and his arrogance. Then she'd slice him, dice him, boil him, and serve him up with mint sauce, after which she would kick his sorry arse out of Ingary and seal all the portals against him forever, and Calcifer would die and he would die and he'd never see the red-haired girl again.

_Hell and damn._

"You brought it on yourself," Calcifer observed, opening one eye. _"And _on me too, of course."

"Yes, and don't I just know it," Howell said. The two of them had not been getting on well at all. Calcifer had spent the week nattering at Howell, who when he wasn't moping had got quite passive-aggressive: absently brandishing the poker in Calcifer's direction, forgetting to stock the wood-pile, neglecting to close the damper when it rained—little things like that. Calcifer had given it right back to him, with each round blazing up hotter and brighter until it was a marvel the castle hadn't melted around Howell's ears.

"But," Howell went on, glowering like a thundercloud, "you've played your part, haven't you, Calcifer? I've been thinking about you and all you've done. In fact, I have been having some rather extreme thoughts as to just how I might remedy the situation _once and for all."_

"Uh-oh," Calcifer said, unexpectedly shrinking to practically nothing. "I think I need to start looking for another job."

With that, the splendidly spectacular snit—the torrential tantrum that Howell had spent the entire week carefully planning—collapsed in a heap. He had known he could not go on putting off the matter of his heart and their contract. He had known how painful and sad that confrontation was going to be. And he had hoped, when the moment came, to have worked up such a towering wave of anger at Calcifer that he could sail right over it unscathed.

Too late. Too late. Howell remained seated on the hearth with his knees drawn up, but he had to look away. He knew that if he allowed his eyes to meet Calcifer's he'd turn to jelly.

"Calcifer," he began. "I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry. I don't like saying this, because I don't want you to die, but here it is. I need—I need my heart back. Right away. Now."

There was a long silence.

"Understood," Calcifer said at last. "Of course you do. No offense taken. But here's the rub: I don't want _you_ to die either."

"Oh, come _on," _Howell said desperately. "There's got to be _some_ way—"

"There isn't," Calcifer said.. "You know that."

"But—"

"You've said it yourself, Howell, time and again: when it comes to encounters between mortals and elementals, the mortal ends up scuppered every time."

"When did I say that?"

"All right then, _thought_ it. And felt it in your heart, many times. But remember the Porthaven Marshes? I told you then and there that this wasn't _that_ kind of contract. But—typical!—everything with you turns into this huge literary melodrama—"

"There's no denying it was a Faustian bargain, Calcifer."

"Oh, now that just _burns me up,"_ Calcifer said, flaring hugely. "If you're Faust then who am I? Old Number One himself, that's who! I'm insulted and hurt. You've cut me to the quick."

"You've got no quick," Howell pointed out. "You're energy, pure and simple."

Calcifer swelled into a terrifying blue immensity that filled half the room, causing Howell to back so far off he was almost out the front door.

"Now you listen to me!" Calcifer roared. "I am no devil! You know that very well. I'm a demon, and not a particularly high-ranking one. And here's another thing that you, in your infinite self-absorption, haven't tumbled to: my life-span may outlast yours by a millennium or two, but in my own way I am every bit as mortal as you are. I _fell,_ didn't I? And now I'm in the exact same pickle. You're not the only one who's scuppered the instant this contract is broken."

Slowly Calcifer shrank into a roiling ball of blue-black flames that emitted an intense radioactive anger.

"I'm sorry," Howell said, devastated. "Please don't go supernova on me, Calcifer. I guess I had hoped—I had wondered—I had half convinced myself, in fact—that maybe, while we were off doing something else, the rules might somehow have got changed."

"Not bloody likely," Calcifer said. "Such contracts are rigidly enforced in the courts of cosmic justice. There's no way out of them, _except—"_ he added meaningly, leaning out from the hearth and putting his fiery face very close to Howell's.

"Except what?" Howell said, hurriedly backing off again. "Geroff, Calcifer! You're scorching me."

"Well, there you go, see? You're doing exactly what you always do, driving away the ones who care about you most—"

"You don't care about me," Howell said petulantly.

"Oh, I give up," Calcifer said, and dived beneath his logs.

—o—

lii.

"Shall we try this again?" Calcifer ventured an hour or so later, during which entire time Howell had sat with his arms folded, glaring at the hearth and not saying a word.

"If that's what _you_ want," Howell said grandly.

"What a silly way to behave! We're talking about a contract here, a very heavy one. And there you sit, pouting like a two-year-old—"

"All right, all right. I'm listening. What do we need to do to get out of this thing?"

"_We_ don't need to do anything," Calcifer said, " because there is nothing that _we_ can do."

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean."

"No, Calcifer, I do _not _know what you mean."

"I _mean_ that you need to get a handle on these _issues _you've got with women."

"What issues? I adore women. If they don't adore me back, what am I supposed to do about it?"

"I'm talking about your fear," Calcifer said. "Your childishness. Your sheer unmitigated emotional frigidity—"

"You're always bringing that up!" Howell said. "I see no connection. The contract is between you and me, and you and me only. We made it without benefit of any third party. We ought to be able to break it the same way."

"No," said Calcifer. "We can't do that now. With the passage of time these contracts accrue a further level of complexity."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"It's rather difficult to explain."

"Try me."

"Oh, all right," Calcifer said reluctantly, as though he were about to give away the secret to life, the universe, and everything. "It's a ramification of what you would call the Second Law of Thermodynamics: the miserable, lovelorn, broken-hearted loneliness of the universe is always increasing."

"That's not how I learned it," Howell muttered.

"Yes, well, for creatures of your limited level of understanding, these things must be simplified. Expressed in the most elementary terms. Dumbed down, you might say."

But Howell _did_ understand. Excitedly he sprang up and began pacing back and forth. "Of course!" he said. "Now I see!"

The fire demon's blue face flickered. "I wasn't paying you a compliment there."

"I know you weren't. I'm terrestrial riffraff, you're a _star._ But it's the point, isn't it? Getting me out of this mess is going to take divine intervention. So. How about it, Calcifer? Who do you know _up there?"_

Calcifer sparked and spat as though Howell had just flung saltpetre on him.

"That's a most interesting reaction," Howell said, grinning at his friend's discomfiture. "You seem a bit, shall we say, _uneasy _with the concept."

"'_Never invoke gods unless you really want them to appear,'" _Calcifer said. _"'It annoys them very much.'"_

"Yes, yes, go ahead, quote Chesterton at me. But I'm talking to _you,_ Calcifer. So what if you were nobody special in the celestial ranks? I'll bet you had some powerful friends—"

"You forget I'm living on borrowed time," Calcifer said evasively. "I'm really not supposed to be here."

"You see? You _do _owe me a favour. A big one."

Calcifer looked resigned. "I suppose I do. All right then," he said. "I used to know some—well, _people_ isn't the right word. Entities, more like it."

"Good. Now we're getting somewhere."

"I said_ used to know," _Calcifer insisted. "That was before the universe crumbled right out from under me, and I fell. It was only for an instant, but it felt like an eternity. I knew it was over, of course. I knew I was dead. And there was nothing for it but to go on falling..."

Calcifer writhed and twisted, fainting in coils, his voice growing more and more distant. "Falling, falling..."

"Yes, I know that part. Get on with it," Howell said.

"And then, poof! Here I am," Calcifer said. "Stuck in a hearth in an obscure corner of an even more obscure—not to mention provincial and insignificant—planet. Not a day goes by that I don't wonder if I'd have been better off drowned."

"Well. _So _sorry for saving your life," Howell said. "But not to worry. I'll never do it again."

"Don't be insolent," Calcifer said. "There's no need. Your request for divine intervention has already been logged in with the appropriate authorities. You see? I'm that good, you didn't even know it was happening."

The fire demon had swelled up again, but the effect this time was not terrifying, only grandiose and a bit absurd. "And now," he intoned, his blue fiery hands making sweeping declamatory gestures, "larger forces are at work. The great machinery of Fate is in motion. You must be constantly vigilant. You must watch for the signs, so that when the time comes you will make thoughtful, well-considered choices. And the time _will _come, you can bet your life on that. But now, you see, you will have the attention and aid of a host of all-powerful agents of the supernatural."

Howell, whose plea for otherworldly help had been made half in jest, felt both amused and toyed with. "Well, now," he said. "This entire thing sounds more than a bit dodgy, Calcifer. Are you sure you're not just having me on?"

But Calcifer seemed dead serious about it. In a not-very-flattering imitation of Howell himself, the fire demon folded his arms and looked smug. _"There's no going back," _he said.

"And even if you're not," Howell went on in growing alarm, fearing he'd gone and cosmically put his foot in it, "how do I know these 'agents' you're talking about can be trusted?"

"You don't. But you'd better have some faith and hope that they can, Howell Jenkins, because you are going to need their help—and any other help you can get—against those _other_ all-powerful agents of the supernatural—the ones you've thoroughly managed to cheese off."

"What are you talking about?" Howell cried, really frightened now. "You of all people should know that I keep a low profile in the spiritual realm precisely in order to avoid that very thing."

"Silly mortal, that doesn't matter," Calcifer said. _"They know all about you."_

The Welsh oath Howell swore wasn't likely to placate anybody, a divinity least of all. "Whom—or should I say _what_—have I offended?"

"An interesting question," Calcifer replied airily. "But there I can't help you. You and I would know them by completely different names. Sorry." He began singing "I Whistle a Happy Tune" in his crackling monotone as he threaded his way up the chimney, after which—quite pointedly—he paid no further attention to Howell.

—o—

liii.

A walk on the moors—a _long_ walk—was in order, Howell decided. And quickly, too, before Calcifer got to the whistling part of that inane song.

As he fled through the green door, Ben's guitar gave a resonant groan, then eerily rose straight off the stone floor and flung itself into Howell's arms. "Wisely done," he told it as he strode off into the heather. "Foul crimes against the god of music are about to be committed back there. So you're welcome to tag along, even though I hadn't planned on a Ben-locating errand today. I suppose you're not much good in a fight with hostile supernatural powers?"

In reply, the guitar uttered a hollow, rather spooky-sounding chord, and from one of its ornately-carved "f" holes a spell came floating out:

_Not of father nor of mother  
__Was my blood, was my body.  
__I was spellbound by Gwydion,  
__Prime enchanter of the Britons,  
__When he formed me from nine blossoms,  
__Nine buds of various kind..._

_Nine powers of nine flowers,  
__Nine powers in me combined,  
__Nine buds of plant and tree.  
__Long and white are my fingers  
__As the ninth wave of the sea._

This was no mere spell. It was an invocation—and a warning. And then Howell understood just _who_ it was that Calcifer was talking about.

Oh, _hell._

He had known them, at least by their Welsh names, since childhood. They were primal, archetypal creatures, the stuff of legend and myth. In his home world such things had been reduced to mere symbols, although important ones: they represented psychological forces and drives that throughout your life you must confront and master—or else become mired in perpetual immaturity.

Of course, in his home world myths and their characters generally remained safely between the covers of books. You could go a long way—your entire life, even—without ever having to (as Megan would put it) _grow the eff up._

But this was Ingary, where the gorgons and furies of myth rose right up to meet you. If it suited their fancy they might up and strike you dead. Or—at the very least—slap you silly.

Now that Calcifer, at Howell's foolish request, had summoned them, in what form, fair or foul, would they manifest? Not that it mattered all that much. When they showed up you did _not_ want to be out on a high moor with evening coming down and the wind blowing cold.

Which, of course, he was.

—o—

liv.

They didn't so much arrive from elsewhere as emerge from the stony contours of the heath, as though they had been there all along. Which they probably had. They were very old, after all, older than the world itself. They had grown dim with time, but though they shimmered and flickered he saw them well enough: transmuting from their most ancient form as lumps of earth and blood to crude pottery figures with fat fecund bellies, then to goddesses of stature and might—Titian-haired Victorian fantasies in gauzy white gowns—and then into tiny flitting winged fairies, debased and diminished by modernity. In their faces he saw Mam, and Gran and Aunt Branwyn and Megan and Mari, and Mrs. Pentstemmon and Lettie and Annabel Fairfax and the Witch of the Waste and all the girls he had ever thought he loved—all morphing and merging into one another and out again, because all women and all goddesses were aspects of the one goddess: the female principle since the world began.

Sorting it out later, however, he decided that essentially there were five of them.

One was tall and glittering, beautiful as an ice-storm, cold as death. As a Welshman he knew her as Arianrhod, the Snow Queen, who dwelt at the back of the North Wind in her spiral castle made of stars. How good of her to come, he thought. No, _really._ She had the entire realm of the Dead to manage, yet Arianrhod had taken the time to pay a call on Howell Jenkins.

Then the one called Olwen came dancing merrily along, wearing a smile more treacly than any Walt Disney princess. White clovers sprang up in her footsteps as she danced, but their whiteness was the pallor of death, and each petal was a tiny skull.

As Blodeuwedd approached, Ben's guitar gave a screeching twang and shuddered so violently that it would have broken loose and gone tumbling off down the hillside if Howell had not been clinging to it like a life-preserver. Blodeuwedd was heartbreakingly lovely and wreathed all in flowers, for she was a creature made—or rather magicked—entirely of them: a beautiful fraud, a thing of air and darkness. In the old tales she had been given life for one purpose only: to lure the young hero Llew into falling in love with her and telling her all his secrets, which he did. Then she murdered him.

He saw the elusive Rhiannon also, though always at the edge of sight, galloping by with her wild pale hair flying behind her. At times she was the white figure of a woman riding a white mare; at other times she was herself the mare. With Rhiannon you could never be sure. The instant you tried to catch a glimpse of her she vanished, only to reappear the instant you looked away.

He realised that he knew Olwen already. As Mam lay dying with her cancer, Olwen had been there too, looking out at him through Mam's tired, troubled eyes, growing stronger as Mam grew paler and weaker.

He knew Arianrhod as well. He had been there when she came and took Mam's soul away and left Mam's lifeless body lying white-faced in its casket, blighted by the eternal frost of death.

Terrible as those two goddesses were, he had faced them once before and lived to tell about it, knowing full well that he would meet them again before it was all over—he, and every other mortal, because nobody got out of this world alive.

So what, then, did Blodeuwedd and Rhiannon want of him? They seemed different, not so final and deadly, yet not benevolent either. Each was like fantasy, a dream. He _had_ been guilty of chasing those; with a family like his, who wouldn't? Yet, to his own surprise, at the sight of Blodeuwedd he felt no stirring of desire. He could see all too clearly the nothingness inside her.

They said of Rhiannon that any mortal man who once glimpsed her riding by would forever be driven to pursue her—but that none would ever catch her. Well, so much for _that_ legend; he might be as mortal as the rest of them, but Howell felt absolutely no itch to go chasing after Rhiannon. None whatsoever. He knew her game as well as he knew his own, because it _was_ his own.

Maybe the test lay in simply standing there and waiting—waiting with every nerve and muscle poised to _run like hell._ For there was one more goddess he had yet to meet. She was the oldest and worst of the lot, more hideous than the depths of hell: Caridwen the hag.

She was not like Rhiannon; you did not pursue Caridwen. With frightful speed and shocking vigour for such a shrivelled old thing, Caridwen pursued _you—_to the death and beyond.

But that was only if you tried to run from her. Knowing better, he stood his ground.

Slowly she came hobbling up to him, leaning on a stick so gnarled and twisted it looked demonic. Again, Howell had to acknowledge the dubious courtesy shown him by these heavenly harridans: Caridwen seldom left the immense black cauldron she tended in her cave beneath the dark waters of the north, venturing forth from the Land Under Waves only to gather special herbs for her thick bubbling brew.

She was joined at once by her weird sisters. Silently, invisibly, icily, they converged upon him now, heavy on his soul with the weight of ten thousand years of birth and rebirth, blossom and decay, life and death. They were sun and moon, virgin and mother, maiden and hag. In winter they sat at the pole of darkness, in summer at the pole of light.

And they had had it up to _there_ with Howell Jenkins.

They rebuked him with a wordless clarity worthy of their heartless little votary Lettie Hatter: _—You, Howell Jenkins, are a preening prat of a Peter Pan. You are psychologically and emotionally stunted. You are infantile. You are regressive. Oh, and did we mention that you suck?_

—_You did, in so many words, _he said in silent reply. _There's no need to be vulgar about it._

—_You are utterly unfit to be the consort of any of earth's daughters, _they said with a finality that was like a stone door slamming shut. Then they vanished into the earth.

So. The divine feminine had spoken, and Howell Jenkins, mere mortal than he was (and male into the bargain) was powerless to countermand it. He was doomed to go through life in loneliness and despair, no one to live with and to love, to argue with and worry with and have children with and grow old with. The gods had spoken. Their word was law, their decree absolute—

Wait a minute.

No.

The _hell_ it was absolute!

—_Excuse me, ladies—_

Instantly they were back, swarming around him like angry bees.

—_Sorry to trouble you again so soon, _he said, _but you need to know that I reject utterly your judgment that I am unfit._

And that, he thought, was as good as kicking the hornets's nest.

But much to his surprise, the whirling vortex of femininity came to a complete stop. There was a tense, severe silence in which they regarded him with—what? Amazement? Grudging admiration?

Not bloody likely.

At last:—_Son of earth, do you imagine your power is equal to ours?_

—_No. It's just that last time I checked, I was a human being with free will._

—_Free will!_ they jeered. _Free will! And what have you done with it? Your mother is dead. Your sister holds you in contempt._

—_Now _I'm _the one who's getting royally cheesed off!_ he cried. _What have my mother and my sister got to do with it?_

—_Examine your soul, mortal._

—_I do. I have. I don't know what ancient curse gave my mother cancer and took her as a sacrifice. _This, at least, he was sure of, and there was nothing they or any other power could do about it. _I only know that I didn't do it._

—_And your sister?_

—_She also has free will. Her soul isn't mine to heal. Though I wish with all my heart I could—_

—_What about the others? _they pressed.

—_What others?_

—_The others of these valleys, whom you courted with false names and no room in your heart for any needs but your own._

—_Go talk to my solicitor._

All right, he probably should not have said that. The already menacing sky grew pitch black, and a theatrically bitter wild wind blew up. _—Insolence! Insolence!_ they cried.

—_But for them, I do plead guilty,_ he said._ Guilty as charged, and I regret each one. But you will leave my mother and my sister out of this._

—_What about Mariah Pentstemmon, who had such hopes and aspirations for you?_

—_Guilty there too._

—_And Lettie Hatter?_

—_Oh, _hang_ Lettie Hatter!_

—_Well answered._

Ha! Was he winning the argument after all? Maybe this whole thing was just a bad case of anxiety.

—_As to the rest, however, punishment is in order._

Or not.

—_Listen, ladies. Why don't you go do your Neolithic thing somewhere else? Go back to your cromlechs and your longbarrows. Go frolic at Stonehenge. Go find a field and make crop circles._

—_This doom is not ours to cast. Your own soul requires it. We suggest you endure what is to come. Bear up under the pain of strict self-examination. Suffer the dismantling of your unmanly defenses._

—_Grow the eff up, in other words,_ Howell said.

—_Do all this, and in the end you will find redemption. You may even find your heart's desire._

—_Seriously? I'm all over it, ladies. You can even help if you like. Let me describe her: a turquoise-eyed ginger, five foot six, about seven and a half stone—_

Their laughter was wild and shrill. _First you suffer!_ they cried with one voice. And they vanished, this time for good.

—o—

lv.

He went down to Market Chipping then, walked the cobblestone streets for hours, visited and revisited each corner of Market Square, always returning to the doorway where he had met the red-haired girl. There was no trace of her, not even the faintest spirit-wisp. Yet it had only been one week since she had stood there before him, utterly real.

He found an inn and got drunk, so drunk he could not even teleport Ben's guitar back to the castle, much less stumble up the hill bearing such a delicate and probably quite valuable instrument. Instead he crashed for the night in a cheap room with a lumpy mattress. Alcohol always played the devil with sleep, and tonight was no exception. He drifted through a series of unpleasant dreams. In one of them the guitar sprouted arms and a face and sat hectoring him like a demented schoolmaster, telling him he'd better learn to play it and sing or he'd never win the heart of the grey-ginger mouse or any other young lady. This was discouraging, to say the least; although he had never been choirboy material, Howell had once liked to sing as much as any other child, Welsh or otherwise. That was until the day they learned Mam had cancer. From then on he could not croak out a single note.

In the morning he dragged himself to the common room. There he sat miserably, nursing a roll and several cups of stiff coffee, waiting for the farmers who were the inn's usual weekend clientele to be up and out and on their way. He had known some lonely times before—many of them, in fact—but this one had to be the worst yet.

Shunning the inn's inadequate bathroom (which of course was at the other end of the hall, all the way down), he made himself minimally presentable with a few slapped-on spells. He would put himself together properly when he got back to the castle. A spot of breakfast, a long hot bath—he would tolerate no cheek from Calcifer—and then he'd think up some errand for Michael and send him off for a visit with his blasted sweetheart.

The rest of the day would be Howell's. A day of quiet and peace in the sanctity of his home. A day for gathering his wits and girding his loins for whatever unpleasantness the old girls had in store for him. Because he had no doubt that retribution was coming. There was no way in hell that Howell Jenkins was ever going to get on the right side of the Powers That Be. No way. Because any man who was foolhardy enough to try to win a goddess's protection—not to mention her heart—had better be either a hero or a warrior. Preferably both.

Howell was neither, and knew it.

By the time he had climbed the dusty path from Market Chipping and was cresting the hill in the wan morning sunshine, Howell was already dwelling gloomily on Plan B: skip breakfast and go right for the long hot bath, figuring he might get lucky and drown in it.

Now _that _was the cheeriest thought he'd had for days.

Even cheerier, yet at the same time ominous, was the smell of frying bacon that came wafting down from the castle on the breeze.

What on _earth? _Howell knew that Michael, decent fellow that he was, would happily cook breakfast every day of the year if Calcifer would cooperate, but Calcifer never had and never would, and that was flat.

Still, the last thing Howell expected, on that Saturday morning in May, was to walk through his own front door only to find that the hag Caridwen had got there before him and now stood stooped over her cauldron, triumphantly heating same right over Calcifer's head!

—o—

lvi.

After a moment of blinding terror he perceived that it was not a cauldron after all. It was only his old iron skillet. And it really was eggs and bacon the old woman was frying up—not the old witch-goddess's thick black broth of "science and inspiration."

And furthermore—curiouser and curiouser—this was no hag. How he knew there was a young woman beneath all that horrifically strong magic he couldn't have said. But he knew it, all the same. There are things hidden from the senses and the intellect that the heart knows at once.

Of course, Howell was not at that moment in possession of his heart. Not that that gave Calcifer a free pass to admit anybody he liked! What was he up to? Did Calcifer plan on breaking their contract and fleeing his hearth, as the Witch of the Waste's fire demon had done? Was some great fire demon insurrection in the works? Calcifer would of course swear on his grandmother that he was no devil. But what was he, really?

This was bad.

But before he dragged an explanation out of Calcifer, Howell was going to take a good long look at the not-hag who'd penetrated his castle-fortress.

He could not see _her;_ he could see only magic—at least two layers of it, so different in style and substance that they must have been cast by different mages, although it was hard to be sure. One was a hideous crawling aging-and-death spell that could only have been an assault. It was overlaid, and partially fused, was a second aging spell that was very unlike the other: a shell as hard and impermeable as adamant, perhaps flung up in terror and haste in an effort to ward off the first. Both spells were so powerful and destructive that he could only hope the young woman beneath them remained intact at her core.

Otherwise, she was going to be dead long before her time.

But before she died she was jolly well going to explain what the HELL she was doing here.

"Who on earth are you?" Howell demanded.

She looked up and stared at him, alarmed. Her eyes were pale, watery, colorless, and the weariness and age in them were utterly real. Yet there was something familiar and fresh about them. She could have been someone he met last month at some raffish pub down one of the valleys. Or in his college days, at a discotheque in Swansea. Or on some spirit-journey into the deep past, rising up out of the mist on Glastonbury Tor...

"Where have I seen you before?" he said.

"I am a total stranger," she said.

Good lord! What sort of answer was that? Transparently, blatantly false, of course! Yet at the same time, rather touching in its very defensiveness. Whoever she was—and he now decided that he had been mistaken, that there was nothing familiar about her after all—she was in a terrible state. To carry one such curse as hers was a sickness, a burden, a torment. But two of them? He couldn't begin to imagine it.

But before he allowed himself a jot of pity for this girl-hag, he was going to have it out with Calcifer. It was time he got control of the situation.

"She says her name's Sophie," Michael interjected frantically. "She came last night." Michael had gone pale and wide-eyed; no doubt he was sure, in his Michaelish way, that this total breach of the castle's defenses was all his fault.

Which of course it wasn't. There was no guile or treachery in Michael's soul, nor was the lad the least bit susceptible to evil influences.

Howell's _other _flat-mate was a different story, however. "How did she make Calcifer bend down?" he demanded of all three of them at once.

From somewhere beneath the flat heavy skillet, Calcifer whined, "She _bullied_ me."

"Not many people can do that," Howell said tensely. In fact, _nobody_ could do that, least of all Howell himself. This was really, _really _bad. Firmly he pushed her aside.

"Calcifer doesn't like anyone but _me_ to cook on him," he said unnaturally loudly, so that Calcifer could not avoid hearing.

Meanwhile, the old woman refused to stay pushed aside. He decided to try a more direct approach. "Pass me two more slices of bacon and six eggs, please," he said, seizing control of the pan, "and tell me why you've come here."

She didn't back off. In fact, she would have stared him down had he not adamantly resisted meeting her eye. He could feel his earring getting a good staring-at instead.

"Why I came, young man?" said the old witch. "I came because I'm your new cleaning lady, of course."

"Are you indeed?" Howl said. _Cleaning lady?_ Good lord, but Calcifer was enjoying all this! Slurping up eggshells as though they were a feast, as though Howell kept him in a state of perpetual starvation. "Who says you are?" he added, aiming the question at the fire demon.

"_I_ do," said the old woman, still not getting the hell out of the way.

She had taken control of Calcifer. She had taken control of the entire situation. _She's the effing Witch of the Waste,_ he thought. _She's got Calcifer, she's got Michael, and I'm next._

And there wasn't a bloody thing he could do about it.

It got really surreal after that.

"I can clean the dirt from this place even if I can't clean you from your wickedness, young man," the old woman said.

"Howl's not wicked," Michael said.

"Yes I am," Howell said, assuming the tough-guy. "You forget just how wicked I'm being at the moment, Michael."

This made very little sense, even to Howell himself, but while Michael and the old woman were puzzling it out he put them both to work setting the table.

Then he turned to the fire, and immediately he and Calcifer were linked.

—_What the hell is going on?_ Howell demanded.

—_Take this skillet off my head and I'll tell you._

—_No, you tell me, and _then_ I'll take the skillet off._

—_She was too much for me, _Calcifer whined._ I couldn't resist her._

—Did you even _try?_

—_Of course I tried!_

—_I wonder. And how dare you go hiring a housekeeper while I'm out? I don't _need_ an effing housekeeper!_

—_All right, you don't. But you need this contract broken, don't you?_

—_What has she got to do with that?_

—_Only everything, Howell._

There was something so sincere, so fervent, in the way Calcifer spoke that Howell knew he meant it. It made him feel—at first he could not remember what to call it, it had been so long—it made him almost feel _hopeful._

—_Well, Calcifer. What do I do now?_

—_Keep her here for a month or so. She should have it figured out by then._

—_Here? Under my roof? Are you insane?_

—_She's_ old, _Howell._ _That ought to help you to behave yourself—_

—_She's not old, Calcifer. Not one bit._

—_All right, she's not. But she looks it, doesn't she? _

—_Bad, bad, _bad _idea. Calcifer. I don't want _any_ woman living under my roof._

—_No, Howell. This woman, you want._

—_Give me ten good reasons why._

—_One is all you need. She can talk life into anything._

Again, Howell felt a tiny prickle of hope. Calcifer settled the matter by saying,

—_Any anyway, she's our very last chance._

_Oh, I am going to regret this, _Howell thought, wondering why it was that together with soaring hope he felt resentment seeping into every corner of his soul.

But it was over now, and Calcifer knew he'd won. Howell lifted the pan, and the fire demon roared up in a glorious blaze of joy and relief.

—o—o—o—o—o—

NOTES on Part Six:

"_Oh, that just burns me up."_—Props to the English-language version of the HMC anime for this joke.

"_I'm that good, you never even knew it was happening."_—Quite a bit of magic happens in HMC that goes unseen and unnoticed by the characters. Some examples are Sophie's initial transformation, the restoration of her youthful heart by Howl and Calcifer, the homework/spell exchange when Sophie opens the black door, and the Witch's curse kicking in.

"_I whistle a happy tune" — _From Rodgers and Hammerstein's _The King and I_ (1951)_. _Howell's opinion of the song is not necessarily shared by the Management, which does, however, concede that a fire demon might ruin anything it tried to sing.

"_Not of father nor of mother_"—From another ancient Welsh poem, _Hanes Blodeuwedd._ That name is pronounced something along the lines of "BloDOYweth."

_He had known them, at least by their Welsh names, since childhood _— DWJ explores Welsh myth more fully in _The Merlin Conspiracy._ Roddy, one of the heroes of that novel, is named after Arianrhod. In HMC, I catch glimpses of Blodeuwedd in both Sophie and Miss Angorian. There are aspects of Arianrhod in both the Witch of the Waste and Mrs. Pentstemmon. Two other Welsh goddesses, whom I could not fit into the story, are Hen Wen the white pig and the Palug Cat, who suggest Mrs. Fairfax and Sophie-as-cat in _Castle In The Air _respectively. In HMC Chapter 16, the Witch's pursuit of Howl is reminiscent of Caridwen's wild pursuit of Taliesin in the _Hanes Taliesin, _with both enchanters turning themselves into different creatures.

When asked why elements of myths and folk tales occur so often in her stories, DWJ writes, in her essay "The Profession of Science Fiction:" "I do not find I _use_ these things. They present themselves, either for inclusion or as underlay, when the need arises... Once I had conceived the idea of founding the story _[Fire and Hemlock] _on that of Tam Lin, about ninety other myths and folktales proceeded to manifest, in and out all the time, like fish in dark water." You can read the entire essay here: www dot leemac dot freeserve dot co dot uk slash questions dot htm

_...in her spiral castle made of stars _— Thought to be the polar constellation Corona Borealis, the "Northern Crown." As chilly and drafty place to live as you might find anywhere.

_Caridwen the hag_ — Also spelled Ceridwen, Cerridwen.

"_Son of earth, do you imagine your power is equal to ours?" — _Hasruel asks Howl the same question in CitA Chapter 21. Gets the same reply, too.

_He now decided that he had been mistaken, that there was nothing familiar about her after all_ — From HMC Chapter 4, "[Sophie] would have died rather than let this overdressed boy know she was the girl he had pitied on May Day. Hearts and souls did not enter into it. Howl was not going to know." By this decision Sophie has unknowingly cast a spell, confusing Howl's perceptions. It's only temporary, however. His magical sight is more advanced than hers, and he won't stay confused for long.


	7. Part Seven

Rags of Time  
by Iolanthe

Part Seven

Author's Acknowledgment: Thank you, Diana Wynne Jones, for your wonderful novel, _Howl's Moving Castle, _with all its layers and subtleties. Thank you too for the use of a few of your beautifully-written snippets of dialogue, which are offered up here in tribute. May you Rest in Peace.

—o—o—o—

lvii.

Mad rage!

Which the hot water showering down on him did nothing to relieve. If Calcifer thought he'd been living on borrowed time before, well, ha!

Because—despite all Calcifer's protestations and disclaimers—Howell still didn't believe a single word. Not one. Belief, trust, friendship—all thrown out with the rubbish the instant Calcifer had just up and presumed to invite this woman in. How dare he? _How dare he?_

Oh, he'd give the old girl a chance to prove herself. She _felt_ safe enough. But at the first suspicion, the tiniest glimmer of a hint that Calcifer might have let the Witch of the Waste walk right in the door of his fortress, castle, and home, Howell was by God going to report the old fraud to the celestial constabulary.

Assuming he could figure out who to call.

And now, what to think, what to do? Whoever she was, she'd already got Michael in thrall—"Oh, Howl's not wicked," the kid had chirped, completely forgetting the narrative they'd developed to keep people like this "Sophie" away from the castle.

Things were changing too quickly.

He still was aghast at what he had seen in the Witch's castle, that day in the Waste: a fire demon, _her_ fire demon, unbound from its hearth, freely strutting about, defying and tormenting the human mistress to whom it owed its very existence. Meanwhile, an insane, inexplicable war was brewing, the King's two closest advisors had vanished, and his Majesty was in a royal twist. _Arglwydd mawr!_ Could it possibly get any worse?

Maybe if he stayed long enough in the bathroom all these troubles would get tired of waiting and just _go away. _

He took extra time and care in getting everything just right—his suit sparkling, his smile gleaming white, his hair a golden cascade. After all, there was a lady in the house. A lady he hoped would be gone by the time he emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam.

He figured he'd been in there a good two hours. Surely she'd have given up by now!

He gave it another ten minutes, just for good measure.

There. She was gone. She had to be. It was perfectly safe to go out now, right?

Right.

He opened the door.

She was _not_ gone. And the castle room was engulfed in a cyclone of soot, dirt, and spell-flecks, combined with the usual bits of organic debris. _Cleaning lady_! Damned if she hadn't gone and raised a dust cloud!

Reflexively he raised a hand to ward it off.

Through it, he could see her looking right at him. Only once before had he seen a woman look at him like that, but he could not, could _not_ remember where. Certainly not the Witch of the Waste; though she had found Howell tolerable enough for her own uses, her eyes held nothing but deep windows onto the Abyss. No, this look was—

If he hadn't known better, he'd have called it gobsmacked adoration.

He waved away the vortex, only to see dust-laden cobwebs tumbling from the ceiling. On the stone floor spiders were scurrying all over the place, colliding with each other in panic and terror.

With savage joy, Sophie was tearing the place apart. "Stop it, woman!" he cried. "Leave those poor spiders alone!"

"These cobwebs are a disgrace!" she retorted.

He felt a momentary chill. A disgrace to _what?_ To the gods of domesticity? Or to the powers of death? This was how serial murderers got started, taking it out on innocent creatures! Mam had never minded a few house spiders, and neither did he. Of course, he _did_ have a few more of them about the place than Mam ever had. He'd even grant that the spiders themselves might prefer not to have great dust festoons clogging their webs...

"Then get them down and leave the spiders," he said, and that should have ended it.

It did _not _end it. "If the red blob leads to Kingsbury," Sophie pressed, "and the blue blob goes to Porthaven, where does the black blob take you?"

Arrgh! Let Michael, who looked increasingly frantic, deal with her nosing and prying. He'd let her in in the first place, hadn't he? As far as Howell was concerned, Michael thoroughly deserved everything he got.

He grabbed the guitar and made his exit through the green door, throwing a final warning over his shoulder at Sophie: "You're not to kill a single spider while I'm away." There. _That_ would be the test of her capacity for dealing death.

—o—

lviii.

An hour or so later, with a great sense of relief, he was departing from the Chipping Valley Banker To Merchants And Farmers, Limited, down in Market Square.

To their tender care he'd given over all but a few crowns' worth of the gold that had been rattling in his pocket since that morning: his payment for the seven-league boot project. This was a new (and exhilarating, if the truth be told) experience for him: strolling with head held high into a grand whisper-filled palace of black marble columns and golden-doored vaults, being called "sir" and treated with hushed deference by men and women in sober black suits—the sort who wouldn't give anybody the time of day who couldn't show them the glint and the satisfying ka-_ching!_ of immense sums of money.

Howell knew that Michael sweated every penny that came into their lives. He knew about the loose brick in the hearth where Michael squirrelled away odd bits and bobs for fear of one day going hungry again. Howell, on the other hand, had always been content with getting by from day to day. And up until now the three of them had managed well enough.

This morning's acquisition, however, had left him dizzy. He'd been paid a _mint_ for fitting out the army, and a great deal more work of this sort was in the offing. A very worried King was throwing so much money his way that even Howell Jenkins, who'd always professed to care little for material wealth, knew it would be much better off in the care of professionals.

You'd think he'd be elated to be thus blazing in the luster of unaccustomed pocket-money, and of course he was. Yet it dismayed him, all the same. It was yet one more sign of the gathering troubles of the realm.

For the search had so far been fruitless. He had divided Market Square on a mental grid and thoroughly checked each three by three-foot section of it daily for any trace, whether physical, magical, or psychic, of Ben, of Justin, and—ever since May Day—of _her._

He had managed to collect a few rumours of the Prince. Justin was known to have checked himself into an inn on the Square and stayed there a night or two—under which of his many disguises, Howell did not learn. He did learn that Ethelbert, the Count of Catterack, had followed the Prince's trail far as the city. Ethelbert had met a local girl and gone home with a bride—a remarkably plain young lady, it was said, with a bit of a reputation (although Howell had never met her)—but with no further news of Justin.

The entire thing was so baffling, so hopeless, that Howell longed for yet another identity. If only he knew how to play Ben's increasingly useless guitar! He'd conjure a cap and set himself up as a street musician. Under an assumed name, of course. _Bob Dylan_ came to mind. And then, the next time something was needed for the war, all the King's horses and all the Kings' men would never find Howell Jenkins again.

But there was no magic in any world powerful enough to make a musician out of a lump of clay. For that there was nothing for it but to practice, practice, practice.

So what was it going to be then, eh? Another afternoon and evening in some dark tavern or other, drinking dark ale and thinking dark thoughts?

At least he'd try a tavern he hadn't tried before.

He got a table at the _Red Dragon,_ a homely name for a Welshman in the throes of _hiraeth_ and despair. It was still early, and there was hardly anyone in the place. Two off-duty waggoners sat on the tall stools at the counter, talking local trade. Lost in his own problems, Howell paid them little attention, until one said, "I heard that Hatter's shop over on Merchant Street never opened today."

"Guess they couldn't keep it going after the father died, back in March," said the other.

"Not so. Their hats were flying off the shelves, at least up until May Day. Never saw anything like it. After May Day, of course, everybody expects sales to get slow until the lead-up to Midsummer. But year in, year out, good times or bad, I never knew Hatter—nor his widow—to miss a single weekday or half-holiday."

That shook Howell from his torpor. The name "Hatter" had of course caught his ear, and the hint he'd detected of some mischance made him uneasy. He got up, quickly settled his bill, and set off up Merchant Street.

It ran north, narrow and winding, out of Market Square and through the oldest part of town. Pleasant, slightly run-down houses, with shops attached, lined it on both sides. Their upper storeys leaned in over the cobbled way, creating a narrow slot of sky above. With all the twists and turns it was hard to tell how far he had gone, but before long Howell found the shop, there on the left at a bend. A cheerful sign, freshly painted with a big feathery hat and the word HATTER'S, swung over the entrance. It certainly _looked _like a prosperous business.

But both shop and house were shuttered and dark. And there were odd spells everywhere, fuming and fizzing outward through the walls and around the door.

He stood there a long while, puzzling and growing increasingly alarmed. The signs were muddled, but he could sense that there had been a struggle here. Worse, he could feel the Witch of the Waste's special flavour of malign magic at the heart of it.

But there was more, much more, that he could not decipher.

One thing was clear, however. The Witch had been here, and recently. Within the past twenty-four hours, in fact.

—o—

lix.

The first thing was to make sure that Lettie was all right. He did a mad, messy transport right over the mountain to Upper Folding. Through sheer luck the guitar wasn't smashed to splinters in his magical haste.

Mrs. Fairfax's place was as bucolic, rose-covered, and peaceful as ever. He knocked at the cottage door, but no one answered. He ventured out back to the garden, and there, kneeling in the grass in a rose bed, he found Lettie. She held a snarling, yapping little dog forcibly against her lap, and she was trying to get it to submit to a brush.

"You'll feel better without those nasty filthy fleas, you know," she was saying. "Just let me— Oh. It's _you."_

Howell's arrival seemed to alert the dog to the presence of a common enemy. It leapt from Lettie's lap and flung itself at Howell, all snapping teeth and slavering jaws.

A palm out, a quiet word of power, and at once the dog was cringing at his feet and whimpering.

"What have you _done_ to him?" Lettie demanded.

"Nothing, merely saved myself from torn trousers and a painful puncture wound to the calf." He bent and picked the creature up by the middle, then placed him in Lettie's arms.

"What do you want?" she said, unmollified.

"Only to make certain that you are safe and well. Where is Annabel Fairfax?"

"Down the valley," Lettie said uncertainly. It occurred to Howell that she was frightened of him, a little. Which pained and distressed him. But with all the horrible things that were going on these days, a young woman couldn't be too careful.

"We got word this morning that a lady at Middle Folding was in difficulties delivering her baby," Lettie said. "Annabel went to help. And if you try any—"

He put both palms out placatingly. "Miss Hatter, it's just as I said. I came here only to make sure that you are safe. And to ask you something."

"Oh, to _ask_ me something. I might have known." With the struggling, squirming dog in her arms, Lettie got to her feet. The two of them bared their teeth at Howell in unison. Spiky, dangerous magic emanated from both.

"Oh, hanged if I do and hanged if I don't," he said. "Listen, Miss Hatter. There is a hat shop on Merchant Street in Market Chipping. Is it your family's?"

Lettie frowned. "What has that got to do with you, Mr. Oak?"

"Nothing. And I don't want to cause you any unnecessary worry. But I felt you should know, in case you have any connection to those Hatters, that I overheard that the shop didn't open today, which is not usual. That's all."

"Didn't open?"

"I went by it to see. It was locked up and dark."

"No," Lettie said vaguely. "That is _not_ usual." She put a hand to her mouth and turned away.

"If there is anything I can do—" he began.

"No. There isn't. Please go, Mr. Oak. I will send word to my family. Thank you for telling me this."

She was still holding the dog, still turned away, and he thought he saw her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. But there was nothing more to be done. He bowed and started off up toward the mountain path. Lettie did not say anything or call to him, and he did not look back.

—o—

lx.

One thing, and one thing only, salvaged that dreadful day. When Howell got back to the Castle, Sophie was sitting by the fire almost comatose with exhaustion, while Michael and Calcifer had hysterics about her cleaning frenzy. Howell couldn't muster much sympathy for either of them.

And best of all, a healthy population of spiders was back in the rafters, happily spinning away.

"What are they?" Sophie demanded. "All the girls whose hearts you ate?"

Oh, game _on!_ he thought with delight. "No, just simple spiders," he replied. Whatever Sophie was, she wasn't aligned with the powers of Death. At least he didn't think she was. Time would tell.

All the same, with an easy heart and a light step he practically floated upstairs to bed.

—o—

lxi.

There followed what was surely the most avoidant week in human history.

Market Square got a really thorough going-over, as Howell was doing everything he could think of to stay away from the Castle.

Whenever he had to be home, he tried to ignore Sophie and her radical innovations. For one thing, the constant rage and disgust she emanated in his direction were so endearing he feared he might slip and say something complimentary in return. And it was too early in the game to throw it.

For another, he wanted neither to encourage nor discourage her. It was a tough call. He'd have tormented himself with guilt over making the poor old thing work like a drudge, but he had never asked her to, he didn't expect her to, she had taken it upon herself, et cetera, et cetera. But the main reason he allowed her to keep doing what she was doing was that he sensed it was all down to displaced anger: perhaps at her family, perhaps at a friend or lover, but most likely at the horrible spells that had her in their smothering coils.

So long as she didn't kill herself with work, of course. Calcifer had told Howell that her age was real, and that he was keeping an eye on her. With many misgivings as to just how trustworthy Calcifer really was, Howell had no choice but to trust him to stop Sophie before she worked herself into cardiac arrest.

He looked in on Lettie as often as he could. He didn't call, merely checked from a discreet distance to be sure she was all right. All seemed normal, except that her dog kept changing colour, size, and breed. Howell found that quite suspicious, but Lettie and Annabel didn't seem to mind. They were out in the fields and orchards throwing sticks and playing with it whenever the weather was fine.

One day, toward the end of that week, he saw them huddled together out in the garden; the dog _du jour_ was an obnoxious toy poodle that scampered, oblivious, about Lettie's skirts while she and Annabel talked to a third woman: handsome, statuesque, with a mountain of golden hair done up beneath a magnificent cream-coloured hat with pink satin roses beneath its wide brim. Apparently she had brought them bad news; Mrs. Fairfax looked grim and worried, and Lettie was crying uncontrollably.

Once again he could do nothing but hope and trust, this time that Annabel Fairfax's gentle good power would protect Lettie, and the lady (whoever she might be), and herself. And their strange little dog, too.

In the meantime, the castle got cleaner and cleaner, Sophie moved in to the cubby beneath the stairs and hung seashells and aprons, business boomed at both the Kingsbury and the Porthaven shops, and suddenly there was plenty to eat.

But he could not deny that something had been wrong ever since Sophie came, or even before that. And it seemed to tie up with the way he seemed so mysteriously unable to settle down to a quiet day at home, much less sit across the table from his cleaning lady and have a simple conversation.

—o—

lxii.

… Until the day he received a nasty shock and a scare and decided he'd better lie low at the castle for a week or two.

It was a dull Sunday afternoon, just past the middle of May though you'd never know it by the chilly weather. He was off to Market Chipping to search for any sign of life at the hat shop and for any new clues about Justin, Ben, or the Lovely Grey Mouse.

The moment he got to Market Square he discovered the bills newly posted on every street-corner:

MISSING SINCE 8 OR 9 MAY,  
PRESUMED TAKEN BY WIZARD HOWL:  
SOPHIE HATTER, 18 YEARS OLD,  
OF THIS CITY.  
GENEROUS REWARD.  
PLEASE CONTACT MRS. OR MR. SMITH  
AT VALE'S END  
WITH ANY INFORMATION.

Oh, God. _"Presumed taken by Wizard Howl."_ It was like an arrow going _thunk! _right through his heart. It wasn't real, none of it; he was only playing Bluebeard to confuse the Witch of the Waste and to have a little privacy up there at his place in the hills. All in fun, really. Didn't the good burghers of Market Chipping _know _that? Couldn't they tell the difference between a bit of play-acting and a genuine menace?

Apparently not.

And now, if he didn't watch it, he was going to be in trouble with the effing _law._

He flew up the hill like a bat out of hell and slammed the door behind him, giving the knob several dozen frantic twirls just for good measure. It came to a stop red-down, which was where he left it.

Feeling safe for the moment, he went to the pantry to find something to eat. He made himself a delicious cold bacon sandwich—chalk one up for Sophie—whose last name, oh _God,_ he hoped wasn't Hatter—and settled in for the evening. He could tell at once that Sophie had been at the bucket of whitewash he kept out in the yard; in spite of the spring storm in Porthaven that was blowing rain in at the window, the castle seemed brighter. But when he mentioned this to Michael and Calcifer they immediately got put-upon and morose.

"Sophie," they said in accents of doom.

Howell, meanwhile, discovered that the wireless in his head had begun playing one of those old Broadway show-tunes, with words he used to think were uproariously funny and that would never apply to _him_:

_Let a woman in your life,  
__And your serenity is through.  
__She'll redecorate your home  
__From the cellar to the dome,  
__Then go on to the enthralling  
__Fun of overhauling  
__You— _

Well, funny or not, they were all doomed to spend the next few days together, here, in the crucible, while cold rain poured on Porthaven and hot thunder rumbled over Kingsbury. The weather in Wales appeared to be like Porthaven's, though not quite as raw and cold. Only on the heath above Market Chipping—the one place he thought he had best avoid until the missing girl was found and the entire thing had blown over—was it sunny and pleasant.

By this time he and Sophie had arrived at a mutual _détente: _they disliked one another cordially, but intensely. He _tried_ to be casual and offhand, pleasantly taking things in stride. Whereas she seemed perpetually enraged, at him and at everything, but, for some reason, especially at him. It was getting rather old. How much whitewashing did it take to work out your feelings about a curse? Of course she had every reason for her anger, yet why should _he_ go on being the punching-bag? The curse was a horrible thing that could very well end up killing her, and it worried him a great deal. In fact, he had been trying, day in and day out, to lift it, or at least part of it, whenever she had her back turned or was too exhausted from redecorating his home from the cellar to the dome to argue with him.

But she had remained stubbornly, obstinately old, while he for his pains had got the exact result the Wicked Witch of the West got when she tried to magick the ruby slippers off Dorothy: fizzes, sparks, and pain. His fingers were burned and his hands ached from the magical backwash. Which did _not_ fill him with fuzzy warm feelings toward the ungrateful old biddy.

"Are you quite sure she's not the Witch of the Waste?" he asked Calcifer the fiftieth time, while Sophie was busy off raising dust clouds.

"Quite," Calcifer replied. "And are you quite sure you're not Horrible Howl, devourer of the hearts and souls of vulnerable young women?"

"Well, what do you think?" Howell demanded. "You ought to know the answer to that. Stop playing mind-games with me."

"Oh, _I _know the answer. I've known it since before the beginning of space and time," Calcifer replied with enigmatic smugness. "But I don't matter. She does. Tell her."

"I can't."

"And so the coward dies another death. How many are we up to now? So far past a thousand I've completely lost count. Come on, work with me. Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?"

"Shut it," Howell snapped. "And anyway, it's none of her damned business."

—o—

lxiii.

The week that followed was exactly as he had expected it would be: a endless series of damp, heavy days spent cooped up with his motley flat-mates. They all got antsy and jittering. They all got on each other's nerves. And as he had known she would, Sophie at last cleaned her way right up to the door of Howell's bedroom.

_This _was something he could not let go ignored and unremarked. He had to take action. He didn't want to. He hated unpleasantness. Worse yet, it scared him. But he had no choice. The ticking clock was nearing High Noon, and the Gunfight at the OK Corral—or was it the Howell Corral?—was about to commence.

He had it all planned. He got spruced up as though for a day on the town, left by way of Kingsbury, and was right back standing guard on the landing when Sophie came tramping up the steps with her mop, rags, and bucket.

"No, you don't," he said. "I want it dirty, thank you."

"Where did you come from?" she demanded. "I saw you go out!"

"I meant you to," he said. He explained that once she could do no further damage to Calcifer and Michael, it was only logical that she advance to the enthralling fun of overhauling _him. _And there was one further bit of business that needed addressing: "Whatever Calcifer told you," he said, "I _am_ a wizard, you know. Didn't you think I could do magic?"

The oddest thing happened then.

The aging spells on her started to waver, almost imperceptibly. She seemed a little less stooped, and her voice got almost girlish. Which made what she was saying all the more mind-boggling: "Everyone knows you're a wizard, young man! But that doesn't alter the fact that your castle is the dirtiest place I've ever been in!"

Oh, she _was_ a mere kid, and a very sheltered one, too, if she'd never seen the kind of pigsty the average twenty-something guy inhabited...! Why, just his stack of once-upon-a-time well-thumbed _Playboys_ was enough to give a nice girl apoplexy, regardless of her age!

But she wouldn't back off. It frightened him and angered him as well, because he had made his bedroom window part of the Wales portal so that he could look out on Megan's garden and keep a watchful eye on Neil and Mari—and he just did not want Sophie knowing about that. Not yet, anyway, when he still knew so little about _her._ Anyway, it wasn't good for her, nor for his family in Wales either, to discover, without any schooling or preparation, that other worlds existed side by side with theirs. The danger was too great. It was one of those magical truths that Mrs. Pentstemmon had instilled in him well.

Sophie, meanwhile, was craning past him for a better look. This was getting tiresome. He waved a sleeve in front of her face, blocking her view of his bedroom floor (a mess, admittedly) and the window onto Wales. "Uh-uh," he said. "Don't be nosy!"

"I'm not being nosy!" she wailed. "That room—"

Egad! Teenaged girls! Oh, how well he remembered all the tears and the hormones and the effing _drama!_

"Yes, you _are_ nosy," he said. "You're a dreadfully nosy, horribly bossy, appallingly clean, um, _old_ woman. Control yourself. You're victimising us all."

"But it's a pigsty," Sophie protested, and in her girlish whimper she added, "I can't help what I am!"

"Yes, you can," Howell said firmly. It was high time _somebody_ played the grown-up. "I like my room the way it is." He realised he sounded rather teenaged and adenoidal himself. "You must admit I have a right to live in a pigsty if I want," he said. So there!

She looked so sad, so crestfallen as she went hobbling off down the steps, that he immediately felt like a heel. Damn it all! "Go downstairs and think of something else to do," he pleaded. "Please? I hate quarreling with people."

But it wasn't over yet. Round Two followed immediately, down in the yard.

—o—

lxiv.

_Why, _all of a sudden, was he such a klutz?

What the hell was wrong with him?

She'd got him so upset his timing was off. He almost missed an otherwise brilliantly calibrated landing on the greasy wet fender of Tad's old Mini, which nearly sent him sliding into a nasty coil of concertina wire. It was pouring rain. Undaunted, Sophie was attempting to drag a rusted Vauxhall bumper out from under a set of wheel covers off a Volkswagen, on top of which he had placed, carefully balanced, a half-rotted binnacle from the Porthaven shipyards, a loosely-bound bundle of belaying-pins which were about to go tumbling off in all directions, and a bucket of pitch.

"Not here either!" He cried. "You are a terror, aren't you? Leave this yard alone. I know just where everything is in it, and I won't be able to find the things I need for my transport spells if you—" He started to say, _bollocks them up,_ thought better of it in the presence of a young lady, and ended with a lame "—tidy them up."

Transport spells were tricky things. In his quest to perfect his own craft he had discovered that although you could never actually _operate_ an internal combustion engine in Ingary (magic and technology, even Nineteenth Century technology, being too divergent), there was nevertheless a sort of magical mojo clinging to car parts from his home world. He suspected that before long the King was going to order him to concoct a means of transporting a lot of people over a long distance in a short time. If his theory held true, then the efficacy of such a large-scale transport spell could only be enhanced by his collection of old carburetors, windscreens, and oil pans.

But Sophie, who knew none of this, was really getting her teenager on now: "Tidying up is what I'm _here_ for!" she wailed.

"Then you need to think of a new meaning for your life," he said.

In reply Sophie gave the bumper a last petulant tug, and belaying-pins went flying all over the place.

"Now trot along indoors, you overactive _old_ thing," he said, "and find something else to play with before I get angry. I _hate_ getting angry."

He didn't just hate getting angry; it scared the hell out of him. Mrs. Pentstemmon had urged him never, NEVER to let his temper get the best of him, all the while muttering things like _scorched earth_ and _deforestation _and _nuclear wasteland._ He got the idea.

But again, Sophie knew nothing about that. And oh, what a spitfire she was! She got right up in his face with her arms folded, like a schoolmarm from hell. "Of course you hate getting angry!" she spat. "You don't like anything unpleasant, do you? You're a _slitherer-outer,_ that's what you are! You slither away from anything you don't like!"

_Nuclear wasteland, _he thought. _Deforestation. Scorched earth. _Don't go there...

"Well," he said. "Now we both know each other's faults."

–o–o–o–o–o–

NOTES on Part Seven:

_Arglwydd mawr! _— Thanks to Caudex for finding this toe-curling Welsh Oath, which she uses in her wonderful story "Embarazada." It's on this site; go forth and read it.

_Hiraeth — _Welsh for homesickness, longing, loneliness.

_But he could not deny that something had been wrong ever since Sophie came _— See HMC, Chapter 19, p. 280 of U.S. paperback edition, p. 180 of U.S. hardcover edition. Sorry, I don't have a U.K. edition for page number comparison.

"_Let a woman in your life" — _From Lerner and Loewe's _My Fair Lady_ (1956).

"_And so the coward dies another death" — _From Shakespeare, _Julius Caesar, _Act II, Scene ii: "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once." I've also heard it as "A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man only one."


End file.
